President Donald Trump speaks throughout a Cupboard assembly on the White Home, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Washington, as Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth appears on.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
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Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
President Donald Trump on Tuesday mentioned he didn’t need Somali immigrants within the U.S., saying residents of the war-ravaged japanese African nation are too reliant on U.S. social security web and add little to the US.
Trump’s contemptuous description of your entire immigrant neighborhood is the most recent instance of him pointedly attacking the Somali diaspora in the US. Somalis have been coming to Minnesota and different states, typically as refugees, for the reason that Nineteen Nineties. The president made no distinction between residents and non-citizens.
The president’s remark got here days after his administration introduced it’s halting all asylum selections following the taking pictures of two Nationwide Guard troopers in Washington. The suspect in final week’s incident is initially from Afghanistan however Trump has used the second to boost questions on immigrants from different nations, together with Somalia.
“They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country,” Trump informed reporters close to the top of a prolonged Cupboard assembly. He added: “Their country is no good for a reason. Your country stinks and we don’t want them in our country.”
Trump for years has criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who emigrated from Somalia in 1995 as a toddler. However he picked up the tempo of his assaults on Somalis on social media final week after Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist, printed unsubstantiated allegations in {a magazine} known as Metropolis Journal, citing unnamed sources, that cash stolen from Minnesota applications has gone to al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked militant group that controls components of Somalia.
Trump vowed final week in a social media publish to ship Somalis “back to where they came from,” and alleged Minnesota, house to the biggest Somali neighborhood in the US, is “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.” On Tuesday, the president mentioned Somalis within the U.S. ought to “go back to where they came from and fix it.”
He particularly pledged to terminate short-term authorized protections for Somalis residing in Minnesota, a transfer that’s triggering worry within the state’s deeply-rooted immigrant neighborhood, together with doubts about whether or not the White Home has the authorized authority to enact the directive as described.
The announcement drew speedy pushback from some state leaders and immigration specialists, who characterised Trump’s declaration as a legally doubtful effort to sow suspicion towards Minnesota’s Somali neighborhood.
The transfer would have an effect on solely a tiny fraction of the tens of hundreds of Somalis residing in Minnesota. A report produced for Congress in August put the variety of Somalis coated by Momentary Protected Standing at simply 705 nationwide.
Trump additionally renewed his criticism of Omar, whose household fled the civil struggle in Somalia and spent a number of years in a refugee camp in Kenya earlier than coming to the U.S.
“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,” Trump mentioned. “Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”
On Tuesday, Omar punched again at Trump on social media, saying: “His obsession with me is creepy. I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
Trump added about Somali immigrants: “These aren’t people that work. These aren’t people that say, ‘Let’s go, c’mon. Let’s make this place great.’ These are people that do nothing but complain.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey known as Trump’s message “wrong” and mentioned Somali immigrants have helped enhance his neighborhood.
“They have started businesses and created jobs. They have added to the cultural fabric of what Minneapolis is,” Frey mentioned. “To again, villainize an entire group is ridiculous under any circumstances. And the way that Donald Trump is consistent in doing it, I think calls into question major constitutional violations. And it certainly violates the moral fabric of what we stand by in this country as Americans.”
