Donald Trump on Tuesday lashed out at Somalia as "barely a country" and described Somali immigrants as "garbage," stating he did not want them in the United States.
Speaking at the end of a Cabinet meeting, Trump said some might consider his remarks politically incorrect, but he did not care.
"I don't want them in our country," he said. "We're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country."
Last week, Trump said refugees were a main cause of social problems in the U.S. and cited Minnesota as an example, saying the state had been taken over by "hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia."
Earlier, he also announced the end of a Somali protection program in Minnesota, which current statistics suggest affects only a few hundred people.
On Tuesday, Trump targeted Somali-born Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from Minnesota, calling her and her friends "garbage."
The remarks came amid a high-profile Minnesota welfare fraud case, in which several dozen Somali residents allegedly defrauded the state's system of hundreds of millions of dollars under Democrat Gov. Tim Walz.
Omar said on X social media that Trump's "obsession" with her was "creepy" and she hoped he would get "the help he desperately needs."
U.S. media have speculated about impending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids targeting Somali migrants in the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota. The New York Times reported that the operation targets hundreds of Somalis without proper residency papers.
Minnesota is home to more than 60,000 people of Somali origin, most of them legally residing in the state, making it the largest Somali community in the United States.
Somalis, meanwhile, reacted with outrage Wednesday to Trump's derogatory remarks about them and their country.
Abdisalan Omar, an elder in central Somalia, said he was shocked by Trump's crude language.
"The world should respond," he said. "Presidents who speak in such a way cannot serve the U.S. and the world."
"In our culture, we do not use abusive language," Bule Ismail, a 45-year-old construction worker in the capital, Mogadishu, told Reuters.
"It is incumbent upon the U.S. and its people to take measures and to be angry with Trump first, then take Trump to a mental hospital for (a) checkup."
Somalia's Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre, however, struck a diplomatic note while addressing an innovation summit in Mogadishu, noting that Trump had also insulted other nations.
"Trump has insulted many countries, including Nigeria, South Africa. There are things that do not need comment; we just leave and skip. It is better to ignore than to make his words look like an issue," he said.
