Women walk down a street in the predominantly Somali neighborhood of Cedar-Riverside in Minneapolis in 2022. The Twin Cities is a hub for Somalis in the U.S.
Jessie Wardarski/AP
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Jessie Wardarski/AP
Minnesota boasts the largest population of Somalis in the U.S. — a community that’s recently faced attacks from President Trump.
On Tuesday, Trump called Somali immigrants “garbage” and said he wanted to send them “back to where they came from.” He continued on Wednesday, saying, “they’ve destroyed our country and all they do is complain, complain, complain.”
The tirade came less than two weeks after Trump threatened to strip temporary legal protections from Somali migrants living in Minnesota.
Trump and other conservatives have also recently seized on criminal investigations and news reports of fraud in Minnesota’s social services system — some of which was allegedly committed by Somalis — to disparage the entire community.
Now, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to target Minnesota and its Somali population in an upcoming immigration enforcement operation, The Associated Press and other outlets reported this week.
Nearly 80,000 people of Somali descent currently live in Minnesota, roughly 78% of whom reside in the Twin Cities, according to the St. Paul-based group Wilder Research.
But it didn’t begin with the Twin Cities. Rather, some of the first Somali immigrants to enter the U.S. in the late 1990s came to a town called Marshall, about 150 miles west of Minneapolis, according to Minnesota author Ahmed Ismail Yusuf, who wrote the book Somalis in Minnesota.
Somalia at the time was gripped by a civil war that caused hundreds of thousands of people to flee the country located in the Horn of Africa, and some of those who came to the U.S. found work at a Marshall meat-packing plant. As word got out about work opportunities in Marshall, other Somali refugees arrived in the region and got jobs in the hospitality industry, as taxi drivers and more, Yusuf said, forming a sizable Somali community in and around the Twin Cities.
“Those people who were hired, they brought their families. And when they brought their families with them, their families of course brought their children with them,” he said.
The Somali refugees who settled in Minneapolis and St. Paul were also attracted by the fact that Minnesota was known for martisoor, which translates to “hospitality” in Somali. Yusuf said the state’s “liberal attitude and social behavior” mirrored the immigrants’ own values.
For some Somali refugees, the transition to living in Minnesota hasn’t been entirely smooth. Some religious Somalis have faced barriers in practicing their Islamic faith, which can involve praying multiple times per day and the wearing of a hijab for Muslim women, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.
The society said the Somali population has also struggled to overcome its association with Islamic extremism, after the community became a recruiting target for ISIS over a decade ago.
Still, Yusuf said the Somali population has continued to grow in Minnesota and find ways to give back. “Right now, wherever you go, still we’re serving the people, we are serving the community, we are serving the state,” he said.
Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who fled Somalia as a child and came to the U.S. as a refugee, in 2018 became the first Somali American elected to Congress.
Trump said on Wednesday that Omar “shouldn’t be allowed to be a congresswoman, and I’m sure people are looking at that. And she should be thrown the hell out of our country.”
Omar said in a Tuesday social media post in response to Trump’s earlier comments: “His obsession with me is creepy. I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
She was one of four congresswomen who Trump said in a 2019 tweet should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” At a rally shortly after his tweet about Omar, Trump paused while some members of the crowd chanted: “Send her back.”
Yusuf said the Somali community is now “a bit under siege” by the Trump administration, but he noted that it also has the support of city leaders in the Twin Cities, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter.
“We are dealing with this,” Yusuf said, “but we are not dealing with it alone.”
