President Donald Trump on Wednesday went on another tirade against Somali immigrants, declaring during his Cabinet meeting that “they’re all crooks.”
“The Somalians, what they’ve done to Minnesota, the Somalians, crooked as hell. Ilhan Omar, crooked as hell,” he said, referring to the Democratic congresswoman from the state.
“They’re all crooks, and we got them, we got them. Now we’re putting the clamps on,” Trump said.
The president made the remarks while talking about the work being done by Vice President JD Vance’s fraud task force.
It’s unclear what he was accusing Omar of. A spokesperson for Omar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After his remarks about Somalis, Trump touted his administration’s work last week making additional fraud arrests in Minnesota.
Trump has appeared fixated on Somalis in the state since news reports last year about dozens of people of Somali descent having been convicted in fraud schemes related to Covid relief that netted over $1 billion.
The Associated Press, citing information from the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office, reported in December that 82 of the 92 defendants who’d been arrested in the schemes at that point were Somali Americans.
There are about 80,000 people of Somali descent in Minnesota, according to Wilder Research, an independent research firm based in St. Paul.
Last week, a woman named Aimee Bock was sentenced to nearly 42 years behind bars for running a nonprofit that federal prosecutors said was at the center of a false billing scheme. Bock is not Somali.
Trump’s rant on Wednesday was far from the first one in which the president has targeted Omar specifically and Somalis in general.
In December, he said Somalis had turned Minnesota into a “hellhole.”
“The Somalians should be out of here,” he said. “They’ve destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain.”
As for the Somalia-born Omar, Trump said then, “She shouldn’t be allowed to be a congresswoman, and I’m sure people are looking at that. She should be thrown the hell out of our country.”
A day earlier, he called the congresswoman “garbage” and said he did not want Somalis in the U.S.
“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,” he said then.
Trump has continued the attacks in the months since, including during an event at The Villages in Florida earlier this month.
“Somalia, it’s a beautiful place. It’s got no government, it’s got no military, it’s got no anything. It’s got one thing that’s really strong — crime. It’s got a lot of crime. They have no police. All they do is run around shooting each other. It’s filthy, dirty, disgusting, dirty. It’s a horrible place,” he said.
Omar responded to one of Trump’s attacks on social media in December. “Your message of bigotry won’t work. Somali Americans are here to stay,” she wrote.
