When Aliya Rahman accepted Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar’s invitation to attend the State of the Union address, she said she had no intention of disrupting Donald Trump’s high-profile speech.

“It is a locus of people gathering and an opportunity to talk to legislators and to be in DC and try to understand – for someone like me, that doesn’t work in politics, who is not involved in policy work and organizing – what is the texture of this stuff here?” Rahman told the Guardian.

Rahman, a 43-year-old software engineer who lives in Minneapolis, gained national attention in January after she was removed from her car and dragged by immigration agents in the city as part of the Trump administration’s increased efforts to arrest and deport alleged undocumented immigrants.

A little more than a month later, Rahman was again forcibly removed by law enforcement from an event – this time at the US House chamber – and arrested for unlawful conduct and disrupting Congress.

All she had done was stand up.

“I was completely silent. My arms were by my side. I was not wearing clothing with writing on it. I wasn’t wearing a button. I didn’t have a sign. I wasn’t making gestures,” Rahman said of her experience.

In a statement to the Guardian, Capitol police said that Rahman “started demonstrating during the State of the Union”, which violated rules for guests.

Rahman “was told to sit down but refused to obey our lawful orders”, according to the police.

The arrest happened while Trump delivered a characteristically combative speech – the longest ever State of the Union address – in which he repeated false allegations about voter fraud, attacked Joe Biden and said “the roaring economy is roaring like never before”, which is not accurate.

Before the altercation with immigration agents in Minneapolis, Rahman had been active in racial and criminal justice and LGBTQ+ advocacy efforts for years, including building a “statewide field program focused on bridging gaps between racial justice organizers, LGBT rights groups and labor”, a bio with New America’s Open Technology Institute states.

Rahman had not worked since suffering a traumatic brain injury in 2024. In January, she was trying to drive to a doctor’s appointment when she encountered a “traffic jam caused by [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] vehicles,” according to testimony she delivered to Congress.

Video of the incident shows at least one officer yelling at her to move. After she drove forward and again stopped, officers broke her passenger window and dragged her from the car.

“I’m disabled, trying to go to the doctor up there. That’s why I didn’t move,” Rahman told officers as they pulled her from the car. The officers injured her shoulders, she later said.

During her 3 February congressional testimony, Rahman said: “The impacts of [Department of Homeland Security] detention on my physical, mental and financial wellbeing and safety have been very severe … Our nation lacks rules and accountability around what a person claiming to be law enforcement can do to another human being, and I am not afraid to keep working on this problem even after ICE is gone.”

After her arrest and public testimony – and the ire that Trump pours down on Omar – Rahman thinks law enforcement was retaliating against her when they arrested her Tuesday.

Her ticket stated that “any disturbance or infraction of the House Rules is justification for expulsion from the Galleries and arrest”.

But the document does not stipulate what constitutes a “disturbance”.

Rahman said other guests near her were standing during the speech and that she stood at other moments in the speech, such as when Trump wished a happy birthday to a second world war veteran who turned 100 on Tuesday.

She said she again stood when Trump said “incredibly racist things” about Minneapolis’s Somali community, whom the president and other Republicans frequently attack. “The Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception. Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings us problems right here to the USA,” Trump said.

When officers asked her to sit down, Rahman said she declined because she was confused since others around her had been standing, too. The officers then grabbed and pulled her even though she told them she had injured shoulders.

“They start yanking on my arms, and I’m trying to say: ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. Just let me walk with my cane, right? Like, I am disabled,” Rahman said.

The Capitol police did not respond to a Guardian question about Rahman’s account of events.

Another officer eventually stopped the people pulling Rahman and told them to get her a wheelchair, she said.

She was then transferred to George Washington University hospital for treatment and booked at the United States Capitol police headquarters.

“I was finally standing up, like many people do all the way through the State of the Union,” said Rahman, who is receiving legal assistance from the MacArthur Justice Center. “If what you think I was doing was demonstrating, you will have a lot of people to arrest.”