{"id":329052,"date":"2025-12-04T01:05:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T01:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/329052\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T01:05:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T01:05:15","slug":"presidential-contempt-shocks-the-countrys-largest-somali-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/329052\/","title":{"rendered":"Presidential contempt shocks the country’s largest Somali community"},"content":{"rendered":"

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 Even for a president who has long made clear he\u2019s no fan of Somalia, the latest round of White House contempt was a shock Wednesday in the country\u2019s largest Somali community<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey contribute nothing. I don\u2019t want them in our country,\u201d President Donald Trump told reporters during a Tuesday Cabinet meeting. \u201cWe can go one way or the other, and we\u2019re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump doubled down Wednesday: \u201cSomalians should be out of here. They\u2019ve destroyed our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamse Warfa, a Somali-born U.S. citizen from the Minneapolis area who has started series of successful businesses, sees things differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not garbage,\u201d said Warfa, who now runs a nationwide education nonprofit, World Savvy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWords matter a lot \u2014 especially when it\u2019s the president of the United States who is talking,\u201d he said, choosing his own words carefully.<\/p>\n

The Minneapolis-St. Paul area<\/a> is home to about 84,000 people of Somali descent, who make up nearly one-third of the Somalis living in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Refugees from the East African nation have been coming to the frigid plains of Minnesota since the 1990s, drawn by the state\u2019s generous social services and an ever-growing diaspora community.<\/p>\n

They have become increasingly prominent in the state, serving on the Minneapolis and St. Paul city councils and in the state legislature. Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar \u2014 a regular target of Trump, who on Tuesday singled her out specifically as \u201cgarbage\u201d \u2014 represents part of the state in the U.S. House.<\/p>\n

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Trump\u2019s comments came days after his administration announced it was halting all asylum decisions following the shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington. The suspect is originally from Afghanistan but Trump has used the moment to raise questions about immigrants from other nations, including Somalia.<\/p>\n

Trump spoke soon after reports that federal authorities are preparing a targeted immigration enforcement operation<\/a> in Minnesota that would primarily focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S., according to a person familiar with the planning.<\/p>\n

Most of the state\u2019s Somalis are U.S. citizens, many of them born in this country. <\/p>\n

Trump vowed last week in a social media post to send Somalis \u201cback to where they came from,\u201d and alleged Minnesota is \u201ca hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later Tuesday, the administration said it was pausing all immigration applications such as requests for green cards for people from 19 countries, including Somalia, banned from travel<\/a> to the U.S. as part of sweeping immigration changes after the National Guard shooting.<\/p>\n

Local Somali community leaders, as well as allies like Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, have also pushed back against those who might blame the broader Somali community for recent cases of massive fraud in public programs.<\/a><\/p>\n

They vowed to protect the city\u2019s Somali community.<\/p>\n

\u201cMinneapolis is \u2014 and will remain \u2014 a city that stands up for our residents,\u201d Frey said in a statement Wednesday.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP writer Steve Karnowski contributed to this story. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 Even for a president who has long made clear he\u2019s no fan of Somalia, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1926,23,12,793,790,23865,1576,16950,6429,6661,3,111,3766,28488,8631,57672,795,21,792,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-329052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-africa","tag-america","tag-donald-trump","tag-general-news","tag-immigration","tag-jacob-frey","tag-military-and-defense","tag-minneapolis","tag-minnesota","tag-mn-state-wire","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-race-and-ethnicity","tag-somalia","tag-tim-walz","tag-u-s-national-guard","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}