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

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

“I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” he said during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Trump said that the United States “is going in the wrong direction if we continue to bring garbage into our country.”

His insulting comments came as immigration authorities were reportedly planning an enforcement operation in Minnesota’s large Somali community.

State officials have condemned the plan, saying it could unfairly sweep up American citizens who may appear to be 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 in the United States.

Trump’s comments represent an intensification of his recent attacks on Minnesota’s Somali community, which recently pledged to revoke its decades-long protected status in the United States, and on its Democratic politicians.

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

During his remarks, which came at the end of an hours-long televised Cabinet meeting, Trump said: “I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, OK.”

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

He also said: “For Somalia, which is barely a country, you know, they don’t have anything. They’re running around killing each other. There’s no structure.”

He then turned to criticizing Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, the first Somali American elected to Congress, with whom he clashed repeatedly for several years.

“I’m always watching her,” Trump said, adding that Omar “hates everyone. I think she’s an incompetent person.”

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

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

The official said hundreds of people are expected to be targeted when the operation begins this week. The New York Times was the first to report the operation.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to comment on the planned operations and denied targeting any people based on race.

“Every day, ICE enforces the laws of the land across the country,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

“What makes someone a target of ICE is not their race or ethnicity, but the fact that they are in the country illegally,” she said.

At a news conference, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the operation by ICE “means that due process will be violated.”

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

Last month, Trump said he intends to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program — a program for immigrants from countries in crisis — for Somali residents living in Minnesota. A few hundred immigrants will be affected by this.

The temporary protection system for Somalis has been in place since 1991, as a result of conflict in the country.

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

US Treasury Secretary Scott Besent also announced an investigation into allegations that state tax money may have been transferred to the militant Islamist movement Al-Shabaab in Somalia, which is part of Al-Qaeda. The investigation follows unverified media reports in the United States, which were denied by the militants.

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

Somalia’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ali Omar, appeared to respond to the Trump administration’s continued narrative on Tuesday.

Without naming the US president, Omar wrote on X, saying: “It has become too easy for some to use Somalia as a scapegoat or a distraction from their own failures.”

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

“When ICE agents interact with Somalis here, they will find what we’ve been saying for years: Almost all of us are American citizens,” Zainab Mohamed, a Minnesota state senator, said on Channel X.

“We welcome support in investigating and prosecuting the crime,” said Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential election and who has been sparring with the president in recent days. “But running a PR campaign and indiscriminately targeting immigrants is not a real solution to the problem.”

Additional reporting by Abdel Nasser Ali

The latest expansion in Trump’s anti-immigration campaign comes after National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom, 20, was killed in a shooting last week in Washington, D.C., and Andrew Wolf, 24, was critically injured.

Officials said the suspect entered the United States in 2021 as part of a program for Afghans who had worked with U.S. forces during their 20 years in Afghanistan and who were deemed at risk of retaliation after the U.S. withdrawal.

Noem said on Tuesday that she would recommend a travel ban on several countries that she claimed were “flooding” the United States with criminal activity.

Earlier, all American decisions related to asylum applications were halted, and a review of green cards issued to individuals who immigrated to the United States from a number of countries was announced. Trump also threatened to “permanently stop immigration” from what he calls “third world countries.”