Trump says Somalis are ‘garbage’ and wants them to leave America. No one should be surprised by his ignorance.
Most of Minnesota’s foreign-born Somalis are naturalized U.S. citizens. They have every right to live in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. They vote. They pay taxes. Trump is their president too.
Donald Trump let us know exactly who he is when he rode down that escalator in June 2015, declared his presidential candidacy and said this about Mexicans: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
We’ve heard him refer to Haiti, African nations and El Salvador as “shithole countries.” Last year, he accused Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, of eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats. Trump allows mask-wearing ICE agents to terrorize undocumented immigrants, most recently in New Orleans as reported by my colleague Will Bunch.
No one should be surprised that he called Somalis “garbage” who “contribute nothing” and should leave America during a cabinet meeting last week.
“These are people that do nothing but complain,” Trump said. “When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”
Trump talks a really good game about putting America First but he really means people of color last. An example of that was when he suspended refugee admissions but then turned around and made an exception for white South Africans.
Even knowing Trump’s agenda, it’s still upsetting to hear a sitting U.S. president denigrate the roughly 250,000 Somalis in this country.
He’s talking about law-abiding folks like Salma Hussein. She made headlines in 2022 when she became the first female Somali principal in her school district in suburban Minneapolis and possibly in the entire state of Minnesota.
Hussein was born in Somalia but has lived in America since the age of 7, and is a naturalized citizen. She’s a wife. She’s a mother of two. She’s a good person. “It’s really hurtful and he’s giving permission to people to be hateful and that’s really disheartening,” Hussein said.
I stumbled across some of her social media posts about what’s been happening and decided to reach out. When I got her on the phone last week, Hussein, 37, and I talked about a lot of things including how a stranger had emailed her saying, “Watch out. You’re not wanted. We’re taking out the trash from our country.”
I shouldn’t even have to write this: Most Somalis are honest, law-abiding people. Many settled in Minnesota during the early 1990s after fleeing their war-torn country. Of the state’s foreign-born Somalis, most are naturalized U.S. citizens. They have every right to live in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. They vote. They pay taxes. Trump is their president too. Some, oddly enough, even voted for him.
I wish they’d thought longer and harder before voting for Trump who posted on Truth Social that Minnesota is “a hub of fraudulent money laundering” and announced that he was terminating Somalis’ temporary protected status.
Dozens of Somalis in Minnesota are facing charges in connection with a nefarious scheme to defraud the U.S. government of hundreds of millions in funding that had been set aside to feed hungry children at the height of the pandemic. Still, it’s unfair for a sitting U.S. president to stereotype an entire community for the actions of a subset. “As a Somali American, I’m just as upset about the people in my community who use fraud to make money,” Hussein told me.
Somalis, who have built a large and influential enclave in Minnesota, are terrified that masked agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take them into custody. Some have started carrying their passports. Others refuse to even leave their homes.
“This kind of dangerous rhetoric and this level of dehumanizing can lead to dangerous actions by people who listen to the president,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday.
It’s textbook Trump — and, of course, MAGA loves it.
In New Orleans last week, Trump sicced ICE on undocumented Hispanic immigrants. At around the same time, his agents were also targeting Somalis in Minnesota.
Which ethnic minority Trump will single out next for harassment is anybody’s guess. The only thing we can be certain is that they will be from a Black or brown community.