President Donald Trump on Tuesday ripped Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., as “garbage” and said Somalis should “go back to where they came from,” in disparaging remarks that have been strongly criticized by local leaders in Minnesota.
“I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, OK. Somebody will say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason," said Trump, who has a history of disparaging African people and migrant communities.
“Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country,” he said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
“I can say that about other countries, too,” he added, as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sat nearby. In a social media post Monday night, Noem said, “I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.” A source familiar with the plan said today that about 30 countries will be on that list.
Trump, however, focused most of his ire on Somalia and Omar, who was born in Somalia and has served in Congress since 2019.
“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,” he said before turning to Omar, a progressive Democrat and Somali American he’s mocked and targeted for years.
“I always watch her,” Trump said, saying she “hates everybody. And I think she’s an incompetent person. She’s a real terrible person.”
Omar's family fled the civil war in Somalia and lived in a Kenyan refugee camp before she moved to the U.S. and became a citizen.
Later, Trump called her “garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people that work. These aren’t people that say, 'Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.' These are people that do nothing but complain.”
"You know, if they came from paradise, and they said, 'This isn't paradise,' but when they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but b----, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it," he added.
A representative for Omar did not immediately respond to a request for comment but she said on X on Tuesday: “His obsession with me is creepy. I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
In 2018 Trump referred to African nations as “shithole countries” and in 2023 he said migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”
He has also repeatedly attacked Somalia and Somali migrants in recent months. Last week he said, without citing evidence, that hundreds of thousands were “completely taking over the once great state of Minnesota” and forming violent gangs. There are about 80,000 Somalis in Minnesota.
Melvin Carter, the mayor of St. Paul, called Trump’s comments racist, Islamophobic and xenophobic in a statement Tuesday.
“When the president responds with division and racism, it’s un-American and against everything we stand for,” he said on X.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the city was proud to have the largest Somali population in the country.
Trump's remarks come as a senior law enforcement official told NBC News that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning an operation in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area this week. The official said ICE officers are not specifically targeting the Somali community, but may be arresting some Somalis who are in violation of immigration laws.
The planned operation was first reported by The New York Times.
The president's remarks on Somalia came at the end of the public portion of a more than two-hour Cabinet meeting, when a reporter asked him if Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz should resign over fraud related to Covid relief funds in the state.
The New York Times reported that 59 people have been convicted on criminal charges relating to the fraud schemes in recent years, and most are of East African descent. In all, the scams raked in over $1 billion in taxpayer money.
Trump said, “Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars, billions, every year, billions of dollars, and they contribute nothing.”
Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday the fraudsters are going to jail, and “to demonize an entire community on the actions of a few, it’s lazy.”
Walz said Trump is “demonizing an entire group of people who came here, fleeing civil war, and created a vibrant community that makes Minnesota and this country better. But that’s Donald Trump: deflect, demonize, come up with no solutions. He’s not going to help fix anything on fraud.”
In his remarks Tuesday, Trump called Walz “a grossly incompetent man. There’s something wrong with him.”
