Trump to target Somalis in ICE operation in Twin Cities

Minneapolis (Somalia Today) — Federal authorities are rolling out an intensive immigration operation in Minnesota that will focus on Somali immigrants in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area, deepening fears in the country’s largest Somali community after days of incendiary rhetoric from President Donald Trump.

According to a New York Times report, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will deploy “strike teams” of roughly 100 officers and agents flown in from around the country.

Their primary targets are Somalis with final deportation orders, but advocates warn that others with pending cases could also be swept up.

The operation, due to begin this week, will concentrate on neighbourhoods in the Twin Cities where Somali families have settled over three decades, often after fleeing civil war.

Local officials say the plan risks detaining U.S. citizens and permanent residents who simply “look Somali” in a state that has become a symbol of both refugee resettlement and political backlash.

The Department of Homeland Security has declined to confirm details. A spokeswoman said the agency does not discuss “future or potential operations” and insisted immigration arrests are based on legal status, not ethnicity.

New ICE ‘strike teams’

The enforcement drive is one of the clearest tests yet of Trump’s promise to dramatically increase deportations in his second term.

An administration official, speaking anonymously because the plans are not public, said ICE teams will fan out across the metro area, visiting homes and workplaces of Somalis flagged in agency databases.

Planning documents described by local media outline “strike teams” combining ICE officers, Homeland Security agents, and other federal personnel, mirroring earlier sweep-style operations in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Charlotte. In those cities, similar actions prompted protests and complaints about heavy-handed tactics.

While officials say the primary focus is on people with final removal orders, lawyers and activists fear “collateral” arrests: relatives who answer the door, people traveling with a target, or migrants still navigating the asylum system.

At the same time, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has called for a sweeping new travel ban on countries she says are “flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies” – a proposal widely seen as aimed at Muslim-majority and African states, including Somalia.

Her comments, carried in a Fox News interview, underscored the administration’s harder line.

Rhetoric and rights fears

The build-up in Minnesota follows a Cabinet meeting at the White House in which Trump launched a tirade against Somali immigrants, saying he did not want them in the United States and describing some as “garbage,” according to multiple press accounts.

“When they come from hell and complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country,” he told reporters. “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country… Their country is no good for a reason.”

Trump also renewed his attacks on Representative Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born Democrat who represents a Minneapolis-area district and who became a U.S. citizen 25 years ago.

He called Omar “garbage,” claimed she “probably” came to the United States illegally, and mocked her for being “always wrapped in her swaddling hijab.”

Omar responded on social media, saying Trump’s “obsession with me is creepy” and that she hoped he “gets the help he desperately needs.”

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz accused the president of using immigrants as political props. “We welcome support in investigating and prosecuting crime,” he said on X. “But pulling a PR stunt and indiscriminately targeting immigrants is not a real solution to a problem.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said Trump’s remarks “villainize an entire group” and warned that an operation aimed at Somalis “calls into question major constitutional violations” and “violates the moral fabric of what we stand by in this country as Americans.”

Pushback in the Twin Cities

Officials in Minneapolis and St. Paul, both of which have policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, moved quickly to reassure residents that city agencies will not act as extensions of ICE.

“Targeting Somali people means due process will be violated, it means that American citizens will be detained for no reason other than the fact that they look Somali,” Frey said at a news conference alongside St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter.

Immigrant-rights groups say they started seeing signs of heightened enforcement on Tuesday.

Organisers reported at least two Somalis taken into custody in the morning, and later heard of federal agents pulling people from vehicles.

Dieu Do, a community organiser with the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, said her group has rapid-response teams on standby and has rehearsed how to rush to raid sites, film arrests, and try to calm tense encounters.

“We have plans in place in case bigger operations come,” she said. “Federal agents should be afraid to come here because we’re not afraid to protect each other.”

Earlier this year, a federal operation in a commercial district near downtown Minneapolis led to scuffles between activists and agents. The Minneapolis Police Department joined federal officers at the scene, drawing criticism from some local officials.

Authorities later said the action was part of a narcotics investigation. However, it deepened suspicion that immigration enforcement is expanding under other labels.

Fraud claims and terror fears

The Twin Cities operation is unfolding as the Trump administration seizes on a sprawling pandemic-era welfare fraud scandal, centred on the defunct nonprofit Feeding Our Future, to paint Minnesota as a hub of abuse and extremism.

Federal prosecutors have charged dozens of defendants with stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from federal child-nutrition programmes in what they call one of the largest pandemic aid schemes in U.S. history, according to Justice Department filings.

Many of those charged are from Minnesota’s Somali community, though the ringleader and several key figures are not Somali.

Trump allies and some conservative commentators have gone further, pushing unproven claims that part of the stolen money ended up with Somalia-based militant group al-Shabaab.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday that his department is investigating whether Minnesota tax funds “may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab,” citing a City Journal article that relied on unnamed law enforcement sources.

So far, federal indictments in the Feeding Our Future cases detail money laundering, shell companies, and overseas investments, but they do not allege that funds reached al-Shabaab.

Community leaders say the administration is using the crimes of a small group to smear a community of more than 80,000 in Minnesota alone.

An Associated Press report put the Twin Cities’ Somali population at about 84,000, most of them U.S. citizens.

Nationally, census-based estimates suggest roughly 73 percent of Somali immigrants are naturalised U.S. citizens, underscoring how a refugee community that arrived in large numbers in the 1990s has put down deep roots.

Legal protections under strain

At the same time, the administration is trying to dismantle legal protections that have allowed some Somalis to stay in the United States.

In 2024, the Department of Homeland Security extended and redesignated Somalia for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) through March 2026, reflecting the country’s conflict and humanitarian crisis, according to a Federal Register notice.

TPS shields beneficiaries from deportation and grants work permits while conditions at home remain too dangerous.

Last month, however, the administration said it would terminate TPS status for Somali migrants in Minnesota, part of a broader push to roll back protections for multiple nationalities.

A St. Paul city advisory warned residents that Trump had announced plans to end TPS for Somali residents and urged affected families to seek legal advice.

A broader USCIS notice on TPS changes stresses that benefits can end 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, adding to the anxiety of Somalis who have built their lives around the programme.

Advocates say the ICE operation, layered on top of these legal shifts and Noem’s travel-ban proposal, risks pushing even long-settled families back into the shadows.

Largest Somali community 

Somalis began arriving in Minnesota in larger numbers in the mid-1990s. Refugee resettlement agencies, relatively affordable housing, and factory and meat-processing jobs drew families to the state.

Over time, they built mosques, malls, restaurants, and media outlets, reshaping parts of Minneapolis and St. Paul and sending representatives to city hall and the state legislature.

That visibility has also made them a frequent target for national politicians.

Trump has previously claimed Somali refugees were “completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota.” He has repeatedly linked them to crime and terrorism despite a lack of evidence that the community is more prone to law-breaking than others.

For many in Minnesota’s Somali neighbourhoods, the new enforcement push feels like a return to earlier years of surveillance and raids, only this time more organised and more openly framed around a single ethnic group.

Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said his organisation has heard of “less than a dozen” immigration arrests in the Somali community in recent days, but warned that extra ICE agents mean extra pressure.

“Our community has lived through fear in the past,” said Minneapolis City Council member Jamal Osman, who is Somali American. “We are not going to let them divide us.”