Twin Cities leaders rally behind Somalis amid reports feds may target community
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City leaders from Minneapolis and St. Paul stood firmly with the Twin Cities Somali community Tuesday following reports that the Trump administration plans to primarily target hundreds of Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the Twin Cities.
The Associated Press reports the enforcement operation could begin in the coming days and is expected to focus on people with final orders of deportation. The New York Times published a similar report.
At a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he found the media reports of a potential push by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be credible, including the arrival of potentially 100 more federal agents.
“Obviously, this is a frightening moment for our Somali community,” he said. Describing the possible federal effort as “terrorizing,” the mayor added, “That’s not American. That’s not what we are about.”
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President Donald Trump recently called for Somalis under “temporary protected status” to be removed. That group is a tiny portion of the overall Somali presence in the United States and Minnesota — about 700 people nationwide, according to a congressional report issued earlier this year. Most of Minnesota’s more than 80,000 Somalis are legal residents or U.S. citizens.
Frey said he worried that federal authorities searching the Twin Cities for Somali people who are living here unlawfully would indiscriminately detain Somali people here legally and end up “taking away the rights of American citizens.”
“They’re gonna get the wrong people,” he added. “They’re gonna screw it up so badly.”
Watch: Twin Cities leaders rally behind Somali community
‘We’re not going anywhere’
Frey, along with Minneapolis police Chief Brian O’Hara, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and other officials affirmed their support for the region’s Somali community as overwhelmingly law-abiding, peaceful and productive.
“Many Somalis that live in this community are working at your groceries, working at your hospitals, delivering your babies. They are very successful individuals,” said Jamal Osman, a Minneapolis City Council member who came to the United States from Somalia.
“Somali Americans are here to stay,” he added. “We love this state. We love this country. This is home. We’re not going anywhere.”
O’Hara said the possible heightened federal presence might end up harming policing and public safety in Minneapolis if people who are crime victims become afraid to call the police. That fear “makes everyone in the city less safe.”
The chief reiterated that Minneapolis police don’t work with federal agents to enforce immigration laws and that officers only respond to enforcement raids to protect lives and uphold the law. He pleaded for protesters to peacefully exercise their free speech rights.
He also urged citizens to call 911 if they’re unsure whether people they see in the community are “legitimate” law enforcement. “That’s something you should report, and we will immediately respond to and document.”
Trump disparages Somalis; Walz says Trump in a ‘spiral’
Earlier Tuesday, DFL Gov. Tim Walz told reporters that he expected to see “an increased presence of immigration folks in our city” following Trump’s most recent comments disparaging Somali people, something he’s done since he was a candidate for president in 2016.
The president said during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday that Somali immigrants are too reliant on the U.S. social safety net and add little.
“I don’t want them in our country,” he said. “Their country is no good for a reason.”
“We will probably see the president threaten to use National Guard again,” Walz said. “This is a president in spiral doing nothing to make life cheaper for Minnesotans or Americans, and we understand who he’s targeting.”
Trump ripped Walz Tuesday during the Cabinet meeting and spoke in xenophobic terms about Somalis. His remarks came in response to questions about how the Walz administration has handled fraud in social service programs. Many charged in Minnesota schemes are of Somali heritage.
“I think that Walz is a grossly incompetent man. There’s something wrong with him, OK? There’s something wrong with him,” Trump said. “And when you look at what he’s done with Somalia, with Somalia, which is barely a country, you know, they have no, they have no anything. They just run around killing each other. There’s no structure.”
Alongside Frey at Tuesday’s press conference, Carter pushed back on the president’s remarks against Somali people.
“The president of the United States opened his mouth to take a whole group of people and denigrate them,” he said. “It seems to many of us that the darker skinned many of our immigrants are, the more our posture on immigration has shifted.”
Carter added that he grew up learning about an America “that prided itself on being a nation of immigrants.”
MPR News reporter Matt Sepic and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
