Historical: Two Muslims first chosen in Congress

Ilhan Omar, 37 and Rasida Tlaib, 42, have been elected by the midwest Democrats.

They are lawyers of minority communities in the continuation of policies against American President Donald Trump's immigrants.

Omar won a seat in a powerful Democrat neighbourhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota, succeeding Keith Ellison, who was the first Muslim ever elected in Congress.

Tlaib's victory was not a surprise.

It took place without settling in a convention neighbourhood extending from Detroit to Dearborn, Michigan.

Ilhan Omar

“I am Muslim and coloured”, Omar said in a recent magazine.

Omar left the Somalia civil war with her parents at eight years of age and spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya. Her family settled in Minnesota in 1997, where there is a considerable Somali population. She won a seat in the state legislature in 2016, becoming the country's first Somali-American lawmaker.

Prior to that, she had worked as a community organiser, a popular political scheme for city leaders in Minneapolis. She decided to run for Congress after Ellison, who is also colored, decided to abandon his country after 12 years in Congress to run for the post of attorney general of Minnesota.

Omar has created a progressive political identity. It supports free education in college, housing for all, and criminal justice reform.

It opposes the restrictive policies of President Trump's immigration, supports a universal health care system, and wants to lift US immigration and Customs (ICE), which has carried out the expulsion raids.

Raida Tlaib

Rashid Tlaib is the daughter of two Palestinian immigrants born in Detroit, the largest of the 14 children in the family.

She says she did not run to make stories like Muslims. “I ran because of the injustices and because of my sons, who ask me about their identity (mysliman) and if they belong to this identity,” said Tlaib in a television interview in August.

Without any Republican candidate in the race, Tlaib's election Tuesday was a formalism.

The headquarters she won is in a mostly African-American congressional district with few Muslim voters.

Tlaib has become a universal healthcare lawyer, requires a minimum national wage of $15,000, union protection and free college education.