Trump says he doesn’t want Somalis in US as ICE plans operation

US President Donald Trump said he did not want Somali immigrants in the US, telling reporters that they “should go back to where they came from” and that “their country is not good for a reason.”

“I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” he told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “If we continue to take garbage into our country, the United States will go down the wrong path,” Trump said.

His derogatory comments came as immigration officials reportedly planned an enforcement operation in Minnesota’s large Somali community.

Officials in the state condemned the plan, arguing it could unjustly destroy American citizens who appear to come from the East African country.

Minneapolis and St. Paul, together known as the Twin Cities, are home to one of the largest Somali communities in the world and the largest Somali communities in the United States.

Trump’s comments represent an intensification of his latest attacks on the Somali community and Democratic politicians in Minnesota, where he recently vowed to revoke their decades-long protected status in the United States.

Trump also recently expanded his months-long immigration crackdown following last week’s shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., allegedly committed by an Afghan who had moved to the United States. Trump did not mention that incident when talking about Somalis.

In his remarks at the end of a cabinet meeting that was televised for hours, Trump said: “I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, okay?”

“Someone will say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country.”

He also said: “In Somalia, which is almost a country, you know, they have nothing. They’re running around killing each other. There’s no structure whatsoever.”

He then began criticizing Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat and the first Somali-American elected to Congress, with whom he has clashed repeatedly for several years.

“I watch her all the time,” Trump said, adding that Omar “hates everyone and I think she’s an incompetent person.”

“His obsession with me is creepy,” Omar responded in a social media post. “I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was directed by the Trump administration to target undocumented Somali immigrants in the Twin Cities, a person familiar with the plan told the BBC’s US partner CBS News on Tuesday.

Hundreds of people are expected to be targeted when the operation begins this week, the official said. The operation was first reported by the New York Times.

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, declined to comment on the planned operations and denied that any individuals would be targeted based on race.

“ICE enforces national laws across the country every day,” said Deputy Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

“What makes someone a target of ICE is not their race or ethnicity, but their presence in the country illegally,” he said.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said at a press conference that an operation carried out by ICE “means that due process would be violated.”

According to local leaders, about 80,000 people living here are originally from Somalia, the vast majority of whom are American citizens.

Last month, Trump said he planned to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program for immigrants from countries in crisis, for Somalis living in Minnesota. Several hundred immigrants will be affected by this decision.

TPS for Somalis has existed since 1991 due to conflict in the country.

Earlier this week, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested her agency would target visa fraud in Minnesota.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also announced that an investigation has been launched into allegations that state tax revenues may have been directed to the Al-Shabaab Islamist militant group in Somalia, which is part of Al-Qaeda. The investigation followed unverified media reports in the United States that were denied by militants.

Somalia is one of the world’s poorest countries, and many of the immigrants who moved to the United States during the country’s decades-long civil war in the 1990s left the country.

Somali state foreign minister Ali Omar appeared to hit back at the Trump administration’s ongoing rhetoric on Tuesday.

“It has become very easy for some to use Somalia as a scapegoat or distract from their own failures,” Omar said on X, without naming the US president.

Meanwhile, local leaders in Minnesota directly condemned the Trump administration’s reported plan for the ICE operation.

“When ICE agents interact with Somalis here, they will find what we have been saying for years: Nearly all of us are U.S. citizens,” Minnesota state Senator Zaynab Mohamed told X.

Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential election and who has sparred with the president in recent days, said: “We welcome support for investigating and prosecuting crime. But putting on a PR stunt and indiscriminately targeting immigrants is not a real solution to the problem.”

Additional reporting by Abdinasir Ali

Trump’s recent expansion of his crackdown on immigrants comes after 20-year-old National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom was killed and 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe was seriously injured in a shooting rampage in Washington, D.C., last week.

Authorities said the suspect entered the United States in 2021 as part of a program for Afghans who had worked with U.S. troops in Afghanistan for 20 years and were considered at risk of retaliation following the U.S. withdrawal.

On Tuesday, Noem said she would propose a travel ban on several countries that she claimed were “inundating” the United States with criminal activity.

Previously, all decisions of the USA regarding asylum requests were suspended, and it was announced that an examination would be made regarding the green cards given to people who immigrated to the USA from many countries. Trump also threatened to “permanently pause immigration” from what he called “third world countries.”