AG Bondi posted sealed booking photos of 16 Minnesota defendants in violation of a court sealing order

On January 28, 2026, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on the social-media platform X the names and booking-style photographs of 16 people federal authorities had arrested in the Minneapolis area on charges of assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal immigration officers, writing "I am on the ground in Minneapolis today. Federal agents have arrested 16 Minnesota rioters for allegedly assaulting federal law enforcement... We expect more arrests to come." The 16 named defendants included Nasra Ahmed, a U.S. citizen who had separately described being wrongfully detained by ICE for two days after being swept up near an unrelated arrest. At the time of Bondi's post, the criminal cases against the defendants remained under a federal court sealing order restricting public disclosure of case details.

Federal magistrate judges in the District of Minnesota subsequently found that Bondi's posts violated that sealing order. Ruling in the prosecution of codefendant Nitzana Flores, Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster wrote that the government "failed to respect Ms. Flores's dignity and privacy, exposed her to a risk of doxxing, and generally thumbed its nose at the notion that defendants are innocent until proven guilty," adding that "the post also directly violated a court order sealing the case." Foster called the government's own subsequent request for a protective order shielding its agents' identities "eyebrow-raising, to say the least" given its conduct toward the defendants. In a separate Minneapolis case, Magistrate Judge Shannon Elkins likewise directed prosecutors to address whether the public posting of the photographs violated that court's own sealing order. Court filings reviewed by investigative reporting later showed the disclosures were staged, posed photographs released while defense motions to seal remained pending, and that several of the named defendants raised the posts as grounds to challenge their prosecutions.

Updates

2026-06-15 — Federal judge dismissed the case against Nasra Ahmed with prejudice, citing the government's conduct [6]

On June 15, 2026, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim dismissed with prejudice the federal assault case against Nasra Ahmed -- one of the 16 defendants named in Bondi's January 28 post -- ruling it could not be refiled. Tunheim wrote that "the Government's actions in this case violated a Court order, likely violated the Department of Justice's own policies, and undermined the presumption of innocence that lies at the heart of our criminal justice system," and noted prosecutors had offered no explanation for seeking dismissal after declining to turn over discovery Ahmed's defense had requested. Ahmed's attorney, Jordan Kushner, said publishing defendants' booking photos "greatly prejudices them before the public" and "jeopardizes their chance for a fair trial."