There are over 80,000 Somalis in the US, 42,000 in Minnesota with 700+ having Temporary Protected Status threatened.
Most Somali immigrants in Minnesota are U.S. citizens, yet residents have been pulled over, asked for their passports and detained by ICE this week after President Trump called them “garbage.”
Nearly 58 % of Minnesota’s Somalis were born in the U.S.; 87 % of foreign-born are naturalized citizens.
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Breaking news: President Trump ended a Cabinet meeting with a rant against Somali migrants, blasting Minnesota’s Somali community as “garbage” and using dehumanizing language to attack a group he has increasingly targeted in recent weeks.
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— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost.com) Dec 2, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Stephen Miller (October 2024): "America is for Americans and Americans only" during a Donald Trump rally at Madison Square Garden.
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I know that fact-checking Trump is like repeatedly slamming your dick with a door, but over on Truth Toilet, he said there are "hundreds of thousands" of Somali "refugees" just in Minnesota. There are 42,500 Somali immigrants in MN. And only 705 under TPS in the entire country. Lies are all he has.
— The Rude Pundit (@rudepundit.bsky.social) Nov 28, 2025 at 11:39 AM
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Operation Twin Shield: 1,000 cases reviewed. 4 arrests made. Trump claims "billions" in Somali fraud. Math doesn't add up.
Trump's Somali TPS fraud claim is disproven: 0.4% arrest rate, conflated $1B figure, and 49 diverse convictions. A manufactured crisis.
— Xray Breaking News (@xray-media.bsky.social) Dec 4, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Trump disparages Somali immigrants for the second straight day, saying they've 'destroyed our country'
The president also continued his verbal attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., saying the first Somali American elected to Congress "shouldn’t be allowed to be a congresswoman."
For a second day in a row, President Donald Trump launched into a hate-filled rant against Somalia and Somali immigrants living in the U.S., saying they’ve “destroyed Minnesota” and “our country.”
Minnesota, Trump said, is “a hellhole right now. The Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain.”
The focus on Minnesota comes after news reports that dozens of people of Somali descent have been convicted in fraud schemes related to Covid relief that netted over $1 billion. There are about 80,000 people of Somali descent in Minnesota.
Trump’s remarks also coincided with the first day of his administration's immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. A senior law enforcement administration official told NBC News that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are not specifically targeting Somali immigrants and their families, but may be arresting some who they allege have violated immigration laws.
Speaking to reporters after an event in the Oval Office, Trump amped up his attacks on Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., on Wednesday saying,
“She shouldn’t be allowed to be a congresswoman, and I’m sure people are looking at that. She should be thrown the hell out of our country.”
“She’s always talking about the Constitution," Trump continued in a mocking tone. "Go back to your own country and figure out your own constitution," he said of Omar, who fled Somalia during the country’s civil war and lived in a Kenyan refugee camp before coming to the U.S. at age 12.
www.nbcnews.com/...
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services followed up with an announcement that “Effective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review,” and USCIS Director Joseph Edlow upped the ante, declaring that the green cards of every alien from “countries of concern” would be subject to a “full scale, rigorous reexamination.”
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was trotted out for the Sunday shows to claim that the Biden administration was at fault for failing to vet Afghan immigrants sufficiently. Asked to account for why the suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was actually granted asylum under the Trump administration, she offered that he had been radicalized since coming to the United States, apparently not realizing that, if true, that vitiates the argument that Biden is at fault for inadequate vetting. CIA Director John Ratcliffe also seems to have gotten the memo, saying “this individual—and so many others—should have never been allowed to come here. Our citizens and servicemembers deserve far better than to endure the ongoing fallout from the Biden administration’s catastrophic failures.”
The administration and much of the press has treated the despicable attack on the two guardsmen (resulting in Specialist Sarah Beckstrom’s death) as an act of terror because the alleged perpetrator was an Afghan. That may turn out to be right, but at the moment, there is little evidence that the motive was political—or, rather, that it was only political. Though many conservative outlets and the government’s charging documents say that Lakanwal shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he shot Beckstrom and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, that is based on the account of just one MAGA-adjacent reporter. Early scourings of Lakanwal’s social media posts do not hint at radicalization or ties to terrorist organizations.
www.thebulwark.com/...
