President Donald Trump speaks throughout a Cupboard assembly on the White Home, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Washington, as Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth seems to be on.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
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Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
President Donald Trump on Tuesday stated 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 america.
Trump’s contemptuous description of the whole immigrant neighborhood is the most recent instance of him pointedly attacking the Somali diaspora in america. Somalis have been coming to Minnesota and different states, usually as refugees, because the 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 capturing 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 lift questions on immigrants from different nations, together with Somalia.
“They contribute nothing. I do not need them in our nation,” Trump informed reporters close to the top of a prolonged Cupboard assembly. He added: “Their nation isn’t any good for a motive. Your nation stinks and we do not need them in our nation.”
Trump for years has criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who emigrated from Somalia in 1995 as a baby. 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 packages has gone to al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked militant group that controls elements of Somalia.
Trump vowed final week in a social media submit to ship Somalis “again to the place they got here from,” and alleged Minnesota, house to the biggest Somali neighborhood in america, is “a hub of fraudulent cash laundering exercise.” On Tuesday, the president stated Somalis within the U.S. ought to “return to the place they got here from and repair it.”
He particularly pledged to terminate momentary authorized protections for Somalis dwelling in Minnesota, a transfer that’s triggering concern 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 dwelling in Minnesota. A report produced for Congress in August put the variety of Somalis lined by Short-term Protected Standing at simply 705 nationwide.
Trump additionally renewed his criticism of Omar, whose household fled the civil warfare in Somalia and spent a number of years in a refugee camp in Kenya earlier than coming to the U.S.
“We will go somehow, and we’ll go the flawed method, if we maintain taking in rubbish into our nation,” Trump stated. “Ilhan Omar is rubbish. She’s rubbish. Her buddies are rubbish.”
On Tuesday, Omar punched again at Trump on social media, saying: “His obsession with me is creepy. I hope he will get the assistance he desperately wants.”
Trump added about Somali immigrants: “These aren’t those who work. These aren’t those who say, ‘Let’s go, c’mon. Let’s make this place nice.’ These are those who do nothing however complain.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey known as Trump’s message “flawed” and stated Somali immigrants have helped enhance his neighborhood.
“They’ve began companies and created jobs. They’ve added to the cultural cloth of what Minneapolis is,” Frey stated. “To once more, villainize a complete group is ridiculous below any circumstances. And the way in which that Donald Trump is constant in doing it, I feel calls into query main constitutional violations. And it actually violates the ethical cloth of what we stand by on this nation as People.”
