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 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 group is the most recent instance of him pointedly attacking the Somali diaspora in america. 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 choices 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 advised reporters close to the top of a prolonged Cupboard assembly. He added: “Their nation is not any good for a cause. 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, revealed unsubstantiated allegations in {a magazine} referred to 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 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, dwelling to the biggest Somali group 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 short-term authorized protections for Somalis residing in Minnesota, a transfer that’s triggering worry within the state’s deeply-rooted immigrant group, together with doubts about whether or not the White Home has the authorized authority to enact the directive as described.
The announcement drew fast pushback from some state leaders and immigration consultants, who characterised Trump’s declaration as a legally doubtful effort to sow suspicion towards Minnesota’s Somali group.
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 lined by Non permanent 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 are able to go by some means, and we’ll go the unsuitable approach, if we maintain taking in rubbish into our nation,” Trump stated. “Ilhan Omar is rubbish. She’s rubbish. Her mates 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 people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, c’mon. Let’s make this place nice.’ These are people who do nothing however complain.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey referred to as Trump’s message “unsuitable” and stated Somali immigrants have helped enhance his group.
“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 beneath 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.”
