Members of the Minnesota Somali community are unhappy about the recent remarks made by President Donald Trump, targeting them. The U.S. president intensified his hostility this week.
Trump’s comments landed with particular force in Minneapolis and St. Paul, home to the country’s largest Somali population.
Speaking during a Tuesday Cabinet meeting, Trump told reporters, “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country.” He added, “We can go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”
By the next day, he intensified those remarks. During an Oval Office appearance, he declared, “Somalians should be out of here” and insisted, “They’ve destroyed our country.”
Local leaders were not spared. Trump brushed off Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as a “fool” and said, “I wouldn’t be proud to have the largest Somali population” in the United States.
Many Somali Americans took the president’s words personally. Hamse Warfa, an entrepreneur who has built several successful companies and now heads the nationwide nonprofit World Savvy, rejected the insult. “I am not garbage,” he said. “I’m a proud American citizen.”
Warfa views Trump’s language as part of a long-running pattern in which immigrant groups become political targets. He recalled how Trump attacked Haitian migrants during the 2024 campaign. “Last presidential election, it was the Haitians and how they eat cats and dogs,” he said. “The next iteration now is Somalis.”
Roughly 84,000 people of Somali descent live in the Twin Cities region, nearly one-third of all Somalis in the United States. The president’s remarks came shortly after reports surfaced that federal agencies were preparing an immigration enforcement effort in Minnesota that would focus on Somalis in the country without legal status. Most Somalis in the state are citizens, including many born in the United States.
Community leaders said they heard unconfirmed reports of people being detained, though details were limited. Federal immigration officials did not respond to inquiries.
Somali families began settling in Minnesota in large numbers during the 1990s, initially attracted by the state’s social support network and later by the expanding diaspora. Over the years, they have become integral to the Twin Cities, launching businesses, reviving retail corridors, and rising to prominence in local and state politics. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who Trump labeled “garbage” on Tuesday, is among the most visible.
Their growing visibility has come with challenges. Authorities have charged several dozen people, many of them Somali Americans, with schemes to defraud social service agencies. Officials have estimated the potential losses could reach hundreds of millions of dollars, though many of those charged are US citizens.
Trump seized on those allegations last week, calling Minnesota “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.” His statement followed a report from a conservative activist claiming that illicit funds were being funneled to al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Somalia. Investigators have provided little evidence connecting the fraud cases to terrorism, and no defendants have been charged with supporting militants.
The latest attacks on Somali immigrants arrived just as the administration paused all asylum decisions after two National Guard soldiers were fatally shot in Washington. The suspect is originally from Afghanistan, yet Trump broadened his criticism to include immigrants from other nations, among them Somalia. The administration also halted immigration applications from 19 countries, including those under a previous travel ban.
Minnesota officials, including Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Frey, responded by reaffirming their commitment to the Somali community. “Minneapolis is and will remain a city that stands up for our residents,” Frey said in a statement.
Democratic lawmakers and several Minneapolis City Council members echoed that message at a news conference on Wednesday. They called on Republican colleagues to publicly reject the president’s remarks. “Where are the Republicans now?” asked state Sen. Zaynab Mohamed of Minneapolis, who said she had invited GOP leaders to attend.
Warfa hopes the political firestorm will settle soon. His daughter, a high school senior, is preparing for college, and he wants their focus to return to her future. “I would rather spend time with my daughter thinking about college, and taking her to different college tours,” he said in an AP report, instead of being “spoken about as garbage, you know, by the president of the United States.”
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