City leaders from Minnesota’s ‘Twin Cities’ of Minneapolis and St. Paul have stood firmly with their Somali communities after Donald Trump’s disgraceful racist rant against Somali people.

Yesterday, Trump described Somalis living in the US, including Somali-American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, as “garbage” and ranted that they should be sent ‘home’, adding that Somalia “stinks” and is “no good for a reason”:

They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you… [Omar is] garbage…we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.

These are people who do nothing but complain. They complain, and from where they came from, they got nothing … When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.

On the same day, The New York Times (NYT) reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ‘strike teams’ will be targeting the Twin Cities area, where the vast majority of the US’s Somalis live, for increased deportation starting this week. Such ‘teams’ have conducted mass raids in other ‘blue’ cities – Minnesota’s ten electoral college narrowly went to Kamala Harris last year – and wrongfully deported tens of thousands of legal residents, including US citizens – many of them children, with almost 60,000 more people currently detained and awaiting processing.

Trump racist rhetoric rejected

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey predicted that ICE would follow this pattern of abducting and deporting innocents and end up “taking away the rights of American citizens”:

They’re gonna get the wrong people. They’re gonna screw it up so badly.

Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also announced this week that his agency would be targeting Minnesota’s local and state governments, claiming that public funds had:

been diverted to the [Somalian Islamist] group Al-Shabaab.

Frey and other city leaders held a press conference yesterday in a show of solidarity against Trump’s threat to emphasise that the city is going to support its Somali residents, with Frey saying:

To our Somali community, we love you and we stand with you. That commitment is rock solid. Targeting Somali people means that due process will be violated, mistakes will be made, and let’s be clear, it means that American citizens will be detained for no other reason than they look Somali.

Jamal Osman, a Somalian-born Minneapolis city councilman, said:

Many Somalis that live in this community are working at your groceries, working at your hospitals, delivering your babies. They are very successful individuals. Somali Americans are here to stay, We love this state. We love this country. This is home. We’re not going anywhere.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

This post was originally published on Canary.