Trump attacks Somali immigrants ahead of expected Minnesota immigration enforcement
Consider This from NPR
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🗓️ 3 December 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
Roughly 80,000 people of Somali descent now live in Minnesota. The vast majority of them are American citizens.
This week, President Trump attacked Somali immigrants in racist and xenophobic terms.
“I don't want 'em in our country,” he said at the end of a cabinet meeting. “Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks."
The mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul defended their Somali community – and responded to reports that the Trump administration is targeting that community with extra immigration enforcement.
Minnesota Public Radio’s Matt Sepic has the latest from St. Paul.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's Elsa Chang. Before we start the show today, our team here wanted to remind everyone that yesterday was giving Tuesday. |
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| 0:53.8 | Music All right. Now to today's episode. |
| 1:04.8 | President Trump has stepped up his attacks on immigrants from Somalia. |
| 1:09.5 | These are people that work. These are people that say, let's go. Come on. Let's make this place great. |
| 1:10.9 | These are people that do nothing but complain. At the end of a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump also referred to |
| 1:16.2 | Somali immigrants as, quote, garbage, singling out Somali American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Democrat |
| 1:23.2 | from Minnesota. And we will come back to Minnesota in a bit. But first, let's know it's far from the |
| 1:30.5 | first time that Trump has made inflammatory remarks about immigrant groups, especially those fleeing |
| 1:36.4 | violence or poverty in their home countries. Some people call it an invasion. It's like an invasion. |
| 1:42.6 | In his first term, that's how President Trump described |
| 1:45.1 | a caravan of migrants heading to the southern U.S.-Mexico border. And as he saw it a second term in |
| 1:51.2 | 23, he campaigned on the idea that immigrants are, quote, poisoning the blood of our country. |
| 1:57.8 | They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South |
| 2:03.1 | America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world, |
| 2:07.8 | they're coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. And a year later, |
... |
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