President Donald Trump’s targets at his Tuesday Cabinet meeting included some of the usual suspects: The Democrats, the New York Times, the concept of “affordability.” But one stood out as less familiar: Somali immigrants in the United States.
Trump said he does not want Somalis in the United States. “They contribute nothing. … They contribute nothing,” he said. “I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you.”
He said Somalia is “barely a country” and “stinks.” “They just run around killing each other,” he said. “There’s no structure.” He called Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., “garbage,” “incompetent” and “terrible.”
These attacks may be new, but they aren’t random.
It all started with a story published on Nov. 19 in City Journal, a policy publication run by the conservative Manhattan Institute, written by reporter Ryan Thorpe and activist Christopher Rufo. The piece alleged that members of Minnesota’s Somali community stole millions of dollars in public funds and sent some of it back to Somalia using informal networks of money-traders, through which Somalia-based terror group Al-Shabaab ended up with some of the cash.
Parts of that story have withstood scrutiny. Federal prosecutors have confirmed there was, indeed, large-scale social services fraud in Minnesota: Dozens of people have been convicted for stealing more than $1 billion in public funds intended for food, housing and services for people with disabilities, and many of those convicted are of Somali descent. But the accusation that money went to Al-Shabaab was first made years ago by a local Fox affiliate, and a subsequent state audit was unable to substantiate the claims. Additionally, none of the federal fraud cases have alleged links to terrorism, according to the New York Times.
Despite the lack of evidence to corroborate one of the central claims of the City Journal story, it ricocheted across conservative media — Fox News, Breitbart and the Daily Caller all covered Thorpe and Rufo’s report — and was shared widely by MAGA-adjacent influencers and Republican politicians, who alleged it served as proof of both Democrats’ incompetence and the need for stricter immigration policies.
Just two days after the story was published, Trump took to Truth Social to claim that “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of [Minnesota], and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing.” He announced that he would end the Temporary Protected Status program for Somalis in Minnesota, which would affect about 700 people nationwide already covered under the program and another 4,000 Somalis slated to become eligible, according to federal data. “Send them back to where they came from,” Trump wrote. “It’s OVER!”
Rufo took credit for Trump’s decision to suspend the program, writing on X, “This is how we win.”
Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately respond to a question about whether Trump had personally read the piece in the City Journal. Regardless, it is undoubtedly on officials’ radar: A White House press release on Monday blasting Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz twice linked to the City Journal article, and on Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced his department would investigate whether the funds were, indeed, routed to the terror group.
Trump again attacked Somalia in a Thanksgiving Day Truth Social post in which he railed against immigrants at large and called the country “a decadent, backward, and crime ridden nation.” (That was also the post in which Trump used a slur for people with intellectual disabilities to refer to Walz, and derided Omar, who is Muslim, for wearing a hijab.)
On Tuesday, as he responded to a question from a reporter about the theft of social services funds in Minnesota, Trump continued his attacks, saying that Somalis “ripped off [Minnesota] for billions of dollars every year and they contribute nothing.”
The Somali community in Minneapolis is now bracing for what could be a large-scale immigration enforcement operation. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing raids targeting undocumented Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, citing internal documents and officials familiar with the plan. A senior law enforcement official told NBC on Wednesday that the enforcement operation in Minneapolis had begun.
In response to a request for comment from MS NOW, a spokesperson for ICE declined to discuss future or potential operations, but said that what “makes someone a target of ICE is not their race or ethnicity, but the fact that they are in the country illegally.”
Responding to the Times story on X, Walz said that while state officials “welcome support in investigation and prosecuting crime … pulling a PR stunt and indiscriminately targeting immigrants is not a real solution to a problem.”
At a Tuesday news conference, Minnesota officials pushed back forcefully against Trump’s characterization of the Somali community. Minneapolis Council Member Jamal Osman, a Somali immigrant, called the president “racist, xenophobic, [and] Islamophobic.” He advised local Somalis to prepare for potential raids. “Have your documents with you,” Osman urged. “Wherever you go, be aware of your surroundings — especially if they come to your house. Do not let them in, unless there’s a court order. Most of them don’t.”
Addressing the Somali community directly, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey vowed that his city “stand[s] with you. That commitment is rock-solid.”
Frey said city officials had received neither advance notice nor official confirmation of the reported raids, and that Minneapolis police would not cooperate with any such operation. He noted that “almost all” of the city’s Somali population “are both documented and citizens.”
Meanwhile, Rufo has been celebrating his role in sparking what appears to be a new Trump fixation.
“There is a certain point in the lifecycle of a successful news story,” Rufo wrote on X Tuesday alongside a headline about the ICE raids, “when it has created a chain-of-action that is completely and totally beyond the author’s control.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.