Trump’s moves on the Somalis of Minnesota will not sit well

Joseph Weber

Somalis have come far in Minneapolis. When I was doing research for a book there nearly a decade ago, I visited professors, college students, restaurateurs, businesspeople, imams and others in a sprawling community – now numbering about 80,000 — that also includes police officers, physicians, politicians and others who run the full gamut of society.

Some of the people I met had fled their homeland in the 1990s after it was engulfed by famine and civil war. They had left a tortured country that had been the product of British and Italian imperialism and U.S.-Soviet Union great power meddling. Others I met included their children, young people who were straddling two cultures as they worked to find their way in the U.S. like so many other generations of immigrants – some succeeding and some not.

But none of the people I met were “garbage,” as Donald J. Trump calls them.

Sadly, though, that is how Trump sees the Somalis who have become mainstays of Minneapolis society. Like any demagogue, he appears to hope that such dehumanizing language will motivate the roughly 100 ICE agents who have descended on Minneapolis and nearby Saint Paul.

Perhaps he hopes this will allow those officers – and much of America — to see these immigrants as less than human. That way, the agents can move forward with roundups of Somalis who they can throw on planes and send outside the U.S., perhaps back to the dysfunctional place they fled.

“I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason,” Trump ranted in a recent Cabinet meeting. “Their country stinks and we don’t want them in our country. I can say that about other countries too. We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage.”

Ignorant of history, deficient in compassion and blind to the gains that have led many Somalis, such as U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, into important roles in the last 30 years, Trump is incapable of seeing the community for what it is. He doesn’t see strivers who are making their way — often overcoming language and cultural challenges in the same ways as Italians, Germans, Poles, Irish and so many others have throughout American history.

Instead, Trump seems to see only threatening legions of unwelcome Black people.

This is not new for him. Nine years ago, then-candidate Trump got his comeuppance from the mayor of Minneapolis for his attacks – just verbal ones then – on the Somalis. On a visit to Minnesota, he had slandered the community, saying such refugees were unwelcome and should not be allowed to “roam our communities.”

Betsy Hodges, then the mayor, responded: “This is America, Donald, and the Somali people of Minnesota and Minneapolis are not *roaming* our communities, they are *building* them …. Your ignorance, your hate, your fear just make me remember how lucky we are to have neighbors who are so great.”

Now, others are damning his renewed efforts.

“To our Somali community, we love you and we stand with you. That commitment is rock solid, Minneapolis is proud to be home to the largest Somali community in the entire country,” the current Minneapolis Mayor, Jacob Frey, said. “Targeting Somali people means that due process will be violated, mistakes will be made. It means American citizens will be detained for no other reason than the fact that they look like they are Somali. That is not now and will never be a legitimate reason.”

And Melvin Carter, the first Black man to be elected mayor of nearby Saint Paul, has struck a similar tone.

“We saw, sadly, the President of the United States opened his mouth to take a whole country of people and denigrate just based on where they come from,” Carter said. “America prided itself on being a country of immigrants. It seems the darker skin the immigrants who come to our country are, the more our posture on immigration as a country has shifted. That’s un-American, that’s concerning.”

Carter, who recently lost a bid for reelection to a member of the city’s Hmong community, lambasted the arrival of the ICE agents in racial terms.

“The last thing we need is federal agents coming here pretending we should be afraid of somebody just based on the color of their skin, just based on what they look like, just based on what country their ancestors claim,” Carter said. “The last thing we need is federal agents coming to town attempting to turn us against each other, to create chaos. We stand together.”

But, in the face of armed, masked and roving federal agents, it’s not clear just how much such rhetorical unity will mean. In the city where a Black man, George Floyd, was infamously killed in 2021 by a rogue police officer, leading to rioting and bloodshed, the agents are likely to be aggressive and some may find themselves to be targets. Certainly, they will be dogged by people videoing their actions — and perhaps worse.

Dieu Do, a community organizer with the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, told The New York Times that her group and other migrant rights organizations have been preparing for more immigration raids. In recent months, local activists have responded to reports of possible immigration operations in large numbers, often wearing gas masks, kneepads and other protective gear. Activists usually record agents with their phones and chant in protest.

“We have plans in place in case bigger operations come,” the organizer said. “Federal agents should be afraid to come here because we’re not afraid to protect each other.”

As a local newspaper, the Sahan Journal, reported, a Nov. 18 immigration raid in Saint Paul may offer a foretaste of what’s to come.

That morning, the paper reported, protesters clashed with federal agents at a Saint Paul wiper manufacturer and distributor. At least 14 people were arrested. Officers from several agencies, including the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fired pepper balls at protesters blocking vehicles.

Many of the protesters had arrived just minutes after the agents. That quick response was part of a coordinated effort. The activists rely on a response system, the Immigrant Defense Network, to alert them to ICE actions and to guide them on how to respond.

And the federal agents may get little help from Minneapolis police. The force will not collaborate with ICE, officials have said.

“I know how real the fear is in our community,” said the city’s police chief, Brian O’Hara. “People are going to want to speak out, to protest, and to exercise their First Amendment rights. Those are the rights of everyone in our community, and I want to be clear that we will absolutely defend people’s rights to do just that.”

O’Hara pleaded for nonviolence, though, and suggested that police will try to keep things peaceful. An official statement from the city’s communications department, moreover, noted that the police would respond illegal or dangerous conduct, trying to de-escalate any situation that threatens people or property.

As usual, Trump and his minions have pretexts they can point to for their actions – pretexts Trump is pumping up with his usual hyperbole.

As TIME reported, the day after the shooting of the National Guard members by an Afghan near the White House, Trump ordered a review of green cards issued to migrants from 19 countries, including Somalia. And, in a Thanksgiving message posted on Truth Social where he announced that he would “permanently pause” migration from “Third World” countries, he particularly blasted the Somali community in Minnesota. Trump claimed the Somalis are “completely taking over” the state.

More recently, he claimed in a Nov. 21 Truth Social post that “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing.” He pointed to fraud among some Somalis in Minnesota over the last five years, in which scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for social services that were never provided. As The New York Times reported, federal prosecutors said 59 people have been convicted so far, and that more than $1 billion in taxpayers’ money has been stolen in three plots they are investigating.

Trump lambasted the frauds and announced he would end temporary protected statuses for Somalis “effective immediately.” That status had been granted by President George H.W. Bush in 1991 and today, according to TIME, losing it puts at least 700 Somalis at risk.

“The actions of a small group have made it easier for people already inclined to reject us to double down,” Abdi Mohamed, a filmmaker in Minneapolis, told The New York Times. “The broader Somali community — hardworking, family-oriented, deeply committed to Minnesota — is left carrying that burden.”

For Trump, the actions of a small group are excuse enough to go after an entire community. Nursing rage that has festered in him since at least 2016, he’s thrown down the gauntlet. After infamously lambasting cities across America for imagined violence, even as violence and crime have measurably declined, his moves on the Somali community seem likely to stir up far more of it in the Twin Cities and perhaps beyond.