US President Donald Trump has said he does not want Somali immigrants in the US, telling reporters they should “go back to where they came from” and “their country is no good for a reason”.
“I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” he said during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Trump said the US would “go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country”.
His disparaging comments came as immigration authorities were reported to be planning an enforcement operation in Minnesota’s large Somali community.
Officials in the state have condemned the plan, arguing it could unfairly sweep up American citizens who may appear to be from the East African nation.
Minneapolis and St Paul, which together are known as the Twin Cities, are home to one of the largest Somali communities in the world and the largest in the US.
In his comments on Tuesday, which came at the end of an hours-long televised cabinet meeting, Trump said: “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.”
“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,” Trump said.
He then turned to criticizing Representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat and the first Somali-American to be elected to Congress who he has clashed with repeatedly.
“I always watch her,” Trump said, adding that Omar “hates everybody. And I think she’s an incompetent person”.
“His obsession with me is creepy,” Omar said in a social media post. “I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been directed by the Trump administration to target undocumented Somali immigrants in the Twin Cities, a person familiar with the planning told the BBC’s US partner CBS News on Tuesday.
Hundreds of people are expected to be targeted when the operation begins this week, the official said. The New York Times first reported the operation.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, declined to comment on planned operations and denied that any people would be targeted based on race.
“Every day, ICE enforces the laws of the nation across the country,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
“What makes someone a target of ICE is not their race or ethnicity, but the fact that they are in the country illegally,” she said.
In a news conference, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said that an operation by ICE “means due process will be violated”.
According to local leaders, there are about 80,000 people living there who are originally from Somalia, and the vast majority are American citizens.
