Author: Heather Schlitz
MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) – At Carmel Mall, a sprawling Somali shopping mall in Minneapolis, people are typically packed shoulder to shoulder, often greeting each other by name, speaking Somali rather than English, gathering to browse new hijabs and shopping from hundreds of vendors in the narrow corridors.
However, only a handful of people milled around the mall on Wednesday night after U.S. President Donald Trump called Somali immigrants “trash” and said “they’re destroying our country.” His comments came as the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis surged, city officials said.
Minnesota’s Somali community has become an increasingly influential political constituency in the state, with U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar as its most visible member.
Trump has focused his ire on Omar and other Somalis as fraud investigations convict members of the community. An intensified deportation campaign began this week in the Twin Cities, forcing some Somali residents to go into hiding and others to become hypervigilant, often carrying their passports with them for fear of racial profiling by ICE officers, according to interviews with residents, local officials and immigration advocates.
“We are not trash”
“I can’t even feel myself because I feel scared everywhere I go. Am I a target? I don’t even know. It’s very sad,” said Ifrah Farah, a U.S. citizen from Somalia and owner of a hair salon in Carmel Mall.
“I’ve never done anything wrong; I’m a hard-working mom. We’re not trash,” she said. Jamal Osman, a Minneapolis City Council member and a Somali refugee who immigrated to the United States as a teenager, said he has been fielded with calls from constituents asking if it is safe to go out and get updates on ICE activity, noting that the neighborhood now feels like a “war zone.”
“Someone is targeted by ICE not because of their race or ethnicity, but because they are in the country illegally. Those who are not in the country illegally and have not violated other laws have nothing to worry about,” said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Still, the community has faced new scrutiny in recent weeks amid a sweeping fraud investigation by the Justice Department. At least 77 people, many from the Somali community, have been accused of embezzling COVID-19 relief funds meant to provide meals to schoolchildren. At least 56 of those charged have pleaded guilty, and a white Minnesota woman accused of being the group’s leader was convicted on four counts of wire fraud.
Deportations surge
McLaughlin confirmed that the wave of deportations began earlier this week, and immigration advocates and city leaders said agents arrested residents on the streets, in their cars and outside their homes in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood, home to much of Minneapolis’ Somali community. Reuters also witnessed the detention of Spanish-speaking day laborers. Immigrant rights advocates say the president is using the fraud investigation as an excuse to target the community more broadly, while Michelle Rivero, director of the Minneapolis Office of Immigration and Refugee Affairs, said the Somali community is a driving force in the city’s economic and social life.
Community tensions heightened on Tuesday after Trump made derogatory remarks about Somalis during a televised Cabinet meeting. He made comments to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday. In an interview with Reuters late on Wednesday, Omar blasted Trump’s comments as racist, Islamophobic and xenophobic. “It wasn’t strange to me, but what was strange to me was how creepy he was. He was obsessed with me and the Somali community,” she said.
More than half of Minneapolis’ 84,000 Somalis were born in the United States, and the vast majority are legal residents, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Most Somalis born outside the United States are refugees from Somalia’s brutal decades-long civil war, which has seen more than a million people flee since 1991. The United States began issuing visas to Somali refugees in 1992.
Many people settle in Minnesota, attracted by refugee support groups, Minnesotans’ reputation for hospitality and social connections. Carmel Mall, a Somali gathering place, is alive with chatter, Arabic music and prayers – the scent of cardamom, cinnamon and coriander from traditional cooking fills the air as friends sip steaming cups of spiced tea.
“It’s a sweet home,” Hayat said. He is a Somali immigrant and the owner of a clothing store in the mall. The mall is filled to the ceiling with glittering headscarves, jewel-toned dresses and imported perfumes. She asked only to be identified by her first name out of fear of ICE retaliation.
Hayat said she has lost 90% of her customers in recent days as community members stay home out of fear.
Somali women – often dressed in flowing robes, stylish headscarves and gold jewelry – run much of the mall’s business and say their businesses have been undermined by the ICE surge and the president’s rhetoric.
“This is not public safety,” said St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, who called the immigration raids a “carnival” that would not make the community safer.
Jelani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Wednesday that Trump’s attacks on Somali Americans and immigrants are dangerous and have led to an increase in cyber threats against the community.
“We know what fear feels like. We lived through a civil war to get here. We’re not going to let this bother us,” Osman said. “There is a real fear in our communities. They are being targeted by the president of the United States.”
(Reporting by Heather Schlitz; Additional reporting by Julia Hart in New York, Andy Sullivan in Washington and Eric Cox in Minneapolis; Editing by Emily Schmalr and Diane Craft)
