{"id":30128,"date":"2025-12-09T13:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T18:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=30128"},"modified":"2025-12-09T13:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T18:52:10","slug":"from-hell-trumps-somali-remarks-ignite-outrage-faith-leaders-push-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2025\/12\/from-hell-trumps-somali-remarks-ignite-outrage-faith-leaders-push-back","title":{"rendered":"‘From Hell’: Trump’s Somali Remarks Ignite Outrage, Faith Leaders Push Back"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Left: The White House | Right: Lorie Shaull \/ commons.wikimedia.org<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

President Donald Trump recently described Somali immigrants as “garbage” who “come from hell” at the end of a Cabinet meeting.<\/p>\n

Specifically referring to Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, a Somalian congresswoman from Minnesota, Trump further escalated his claims by describing<\/a> “Somalia in the Horn of Africa as ‘barely a country’ and accused refugees in the Twin Cities of having ‘ripped off that state for billions of dollars, every year,” further citing that they “contribute nothing.”<\/p>\n

The President, who has a long history of targeting the North Star State’s Somali population and the representative with derogatory language, added<\/a>, “We don’t want them in our country. Their country stinks \u2026 When they come from Hell, they complain, they do nothing but [expletive], and we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to their country and fix it.”<\/p>\n

In response, Representative Omar penned an opinion essay in The New York Times<\/em><\/a> the next day, and said that his remarks reach for “the same playbook of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and division again and again.”<\/p>\n

Whenever the President maligns her, the number of death threats against her, her family, and her staff members increases exponentially. For Omar, however, “What keeps me up at night is that people who share the identities I hold \u2013 Black, Somali, hijabi, immigrant \u2013 will suffer the consequences of his words, which so often go unchecked by members of the Republican Party and other elected officials.”<\/p>\n

Omar remains firm in her commitment to not let the President “intimidate or debilitate” her people and those she represents.<\/p>\n

Immediately following the comments<\/a>, “Trump called for a crackdown on Somali people in Minnesota, whom he accused of being responsible for fraud in government programs.” According to ABC News<\/a>, his barrage came three days after The New York Times <\/em>“published an investigation \u2026 on fraud allegedly perpetrated by Somali immigrants against Minnesota’s social services system.” The account details law enforcement officials who claim that “fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora” over the last five years.<\/p>\n

In response<\/a>, “the Trump administration is launching an intensive immigration enforcement operation primarily targeting hundreds of undocumented Somali immigrants in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region.”<\/p>\n

Minnesota, which is home to an estimated<\/a> 84,000 Somalis (the majority of whom have legal citizenship, while over 700 have Temporary Protected Status), saw an increase in the number of refugees in the 1990s, following the civil war. Over 260,000 people of Somali descent now call the U.S. home, with the biggest concentration of which live in the Twin Cities.<\/p>\n

Faith leaders across various traditions are responding in a number of ways, primarily by organizing<\/a> to “protect Somali communities and houses of worship” in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area.<\/p>\n

According to interfaith organizer Khalid Omar, local faith organizers and leaders<\/a> “plan to gather outside mosques in the area to show solidarity with Muslim immigrants,” in an effort to push back against the terror the Trump administration is imposing on their community.<\/p>\n

“It does not just stay words. It becomes permission, a permission of harassment, a permission for profiling and a permission for violence,” Yusef Abdulle<\/a>, executive director and imam of the Islamic Association of North America, stated.<\/p>\n

Christian and Jewish faith leaders responded with similar sentiments.<\/p>\n

The Rev. Paul Graham, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), reminded listeners of a faith that<\/a> “teaches that all people, all people, are created in the image of God.”<\/p>\n

Likewise, the DFL Jewish Community Outreach Organization (JCOO) of Minnesota<\/a> “condemns the President’s language in the strongest terms. No people are garbage or vermin.”<\/p>\n

Following the first week of the operation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed that five Somali residents<\/a> had been arrested by federal immigration agents in the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump recently described Somali immigrants as “garbage” who “come from hell” at the end of a Cabinet meeting. Specifically referring to Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, a Somalian congresswoman from Minnesota, Trump further escalated his claims by describing “Somalia in the Horn of Africa as ‘barely a country’ and accused refugees in the Twin…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":30131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n'From Hell': Trump's Somali Remarks Ignite Outrage, Faith Leaders Push Back<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Faith leaders across Minnesota condemn President Trump\u2019s remarks calling Somali immigrants \u201cgarbage,\u201d urging unity and dignity for all people.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2025\/12\/from-hell-trumps-somali-remarks-ignite-outrage-faith-leaders-push-back\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"'From Hell': Trump's Somali Remarks Ignite Outrage, Faith Leaders Push Back\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Faith leaders across Minnesota condemn President Trump\u2019s remarks calling Somali immigrants \u201cgarbage,\u201d urging unity and dignity for all people.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2025\/12\/from-hell-trumps-somali-remarks-ignite-outrage-faith-leaders-push-back\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-12-09T18:52:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" 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