Scorned by the president, Somalis in Minnesota are embraced by the state that took them in

By Rob Kuznia, Alicia Wallace, CNN

Minneapolis (CNN) — People of Somali descent in Minnesota have endured a dizzying week.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump called them “garbage” and sent immigration enforcement agents into the state, which is home to the nation’s largest Somali diaspora. By Thursday, officials in the Department of Homeland Security were touting the arrest of a handful of Somali men, whom the agency called the “worst of the worst.” Throughout, hate mail poured into inboxes at mosques and advocacy groups.

And yet, the wave of vitriol during the Trump administration’s continued nationwide immigration crackdown has been met with an opposing wave of solidarity in Minnesota. State leaders have been quick to publicly embrace the community. And some of those emails flooding the inboxes of organizers were expressions of kindness.

“People (were) saying that Minnesota Somalis are as Minnesotan as tater-tot hotdish,” said Suleiman Adan, deputy executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, describing the tone and content of some of the emails comparing the community to the state’s beloved casserole. “Somalis are as Minnesota as the state fair. That is, you know, we belong.”

In the unfamiliar glare of the national spotlight, Minnesotans with roots from the East African country of Somalia have felt pulled in two directions: singled out by an American president who has called attention to a massive and still-unfolding case of pandemic-era fraud, but embraced by the state that offered them refuge from a vicious and bloody civil war decades ago.

Salman Fiqy, a Somali small business owner who supported Trump and ran for state representative as a Republican last year, said the president’s latest comments were the straw that broke the camel’s back when it comes to his backing of the Minnesota GOP.

“It’s very unpresidential coming from the commander in chief of the United States to dehumanize … a whole entire community by calling them garbage,” he told CNN Saturday. “This is not acceptable.”

Fiqy said he doesn’t regret voting for Trump and shares some of his conservative values but is critical of state Republican leaders “for not standing up for the Somali community.”

The surge of federal immigration agents in the state this week has spread fear in the Somali community, Fiqy said. “I sympathize with them,” he said of the Somali diaspora.

How Minnesota became epicenter of Somali diaspora

Prior to the 1990s, there were very few Somalis living in Minnesota. The early part of that decade saw the Somali government collapse as the country descended into violence. Millions of residents were displaced or ultimately fled, seeking refuge and asylum.

“People had nowhere to go,” said Abdi Ismail Samatar, a distinguished University of Minnesota geography professor, researcher and author who left Somalia 34 years ago. “The schools, the hospitals, the security systems, everything, collapsed like nowhere else in the world at that point in time.”

Somalis fled to nearly every continent on the planet, but Minnesota became an epicenter.

The immigrants were drawn to the North Star State by job opportunities at meatpacking plants in rural areas where demand for workers far outstripped the supply, said Ahmed Ismail Yusuf, a Minnesota author, writer and playwright who wrote “Somalis in Minnesota.”

“They found out that there were other jobs no one was taking, like janitors or in the hospitality industry, car rental agencies, taxi driving,” he said in an interview with CNN.

The state’s generous offering of social services was another magnet.

“That helped the elderly people who had fallen between the cracks, and young people who didn’t have anything were able to sustain themselves and put families together,” Samatar said. “So then, the kids who came here in their early teens, in 10 to 15 years, are graduating from high school, from college and became lawyers, doctors, nurses, schoolteachers.”

Over the decades, a snowball effect took hold as the Somali diaspora reached a critical mass in Minnesota, pulling in still more friends and relatives from abroad and other US states.

Today, with around 84,000 of the state’s roughly 108,000 Somali Americans concentrated in the Twin Cities, the contingent has become a potent voting bloc in the region – so much so that it powered the rise of Ilhan Omar, a progressive Democrat who in 2017 became the first Somali-American lawmaker in the nation. She was elected to Congress two years later.

Omar also happens to be one of Trump’s most frequent foils – he has often targeted her over the years on social media and in public remarks.

She was again on Trump’s mind days after a report in a journal published by a conservative think tank about the fraud scandal in Minnesota, which involved as much as $300 million and has led to charges against dozens of people, the vast majority of them of Somali descent.

Trump had referenced the scandal, which diverted money meant to feed children during the pandemic to fraudsters, a week before Thanksgiving, calling Minnesota a “hub of fraudulent money laundering activity” as he announced plans to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Somali residents in the state.

On Tuesday, he disparaged Omar during a rambling monologue at a cabinet meeting.

“Ilhan Omar is garbage,” he said. “Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people that work. These aren’t people that say, ‘let’s go. Come on, let’s make this place great.’”

Omar responded on X that Trump’s “obsession” with her is “creepy.”

“I hope he gets the help he desperately needs,” she said.

A show of solidarity with the Somali community

Around the same time, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation targeting undocumented Somali immigrants launched in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.

The vast majority of Somalis are here legally.

In a Thursday news release, DHS said it had arrested 12 “criminal illegal aliens” during what it is calling “Operation Metro Surge” in the Twin Cities. Five of them are from Somalia, according to the statement.

Meanwhile, public officials in Minnesota have taken pains to show their solidarity with the Somali community. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara joined an interfaith prayer circle. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey made the rounds Wednesday at a mall that caters primarily to the Somali population.

On Friday, US Sen. Amy Klobuchar appeared at the same place – the Karmel Mall – to show her support; she was thronged by a small but enthusiastic crowd of onlookers, many of whom sought to have their photo taken with her.

“As a former prosecutor, I’m strongly in favor of prosecuting those fraud cases,” she told CNN, walking down a corridor that included tailor shops, eateries, cellphone accessory stores and garment boutiques. “However, what the president has done here is indict an entire group of people. They’re businesses, police officers, and firefighters in our state, and we’ve got to stand there with them.”

Mohamed Ali Hassan, the president of a nonprofit with an office at the mall, condemned Trump’s use of the term “garbage,” adding that such dehumanizing terms should never be used to describe people.

“There’s a Somali proverb,” he said. “An insulting or cursing mouth is on the person who curses.”

Somalis weren’t the only immigrants in Minnesota to receive hate mail in the wake of Trump’s comments.

Taaha Sameru, a board member at the Tawfiq Islamic Center in Minneapolis, said he fled Ethiopia due to political repression. Sameru, who arrived in the Land of 10,000 Lakes in 2005, said he’d never received a xenophobic email until this week. The message was reviewed by CNN.

“It is particularly disheartening to witness the prevalence of bigoted views, especially during times of heightened political tension and social unrest,” he said in an email.

Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of CAIR, said he believes Trump’s attacks will ultimately make the state’s Somali community stronger.

“I think it’s giving us a chance for many Americans to learn about the Somali community, and not only that, but also to see the resilience,” he said. “Also, it’s giving Somali Americans a chance to own their American identity and fight for it.”

Abdi Samatar, the geography professor, echoed the sentiment.

“That’s the future of the country – the civic bonds, people who say, ‘not on our watch; not on this group; not on that group; not on any group, for that matter,’” he said. “While at the same time, every community looks inside itself and says, ‘We are not going to allow some of our members to do these kinds of things.’”

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