In a fresh outburst of anti-Somali and anti-Muslim rhetoric, President Donald Trump portrayed Minnesota’s Somali American community as a threat to the state Thursday, hours after branding Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, a radical extremist.
"The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants. There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State. The people of Minnesota must fight back,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Trump also called on Minnesota authorities to seek federal intervention.
Civil rights advocates have criticized the Republican president’s rhetoric toward minorities and immigrants, including his previous characterization of Somalis as "garbage.”
Trump has repeatedly cited a Minnesota fraud scandal dating to 2020, in which dozens of people were accused of defrauding a state-run, federally funded child nutrition program of millions of dollars. Many of the defendants were Somali Americans.
In May, Aimee Bock, who is not a Somali immigrant and led the Minnesota nonprofit involved in the scandal, was sentenced to 41 years in prison after being convicted last year of orchestrating the scheme.
Trump has used the fraud case to justify targeting Minnesota, a Democratic-led state, with an aggressive immigration enforcement operation earlier this year. He has also pursued measures aimed at restricting social service programs in the state, including Medicaid and child care.
Rights groups have accused Trump of using individual fraud cases to justify collectively targeting immigrant communities. They have also criticized his approach to combating fraud, pointing to his pardons of people convicted of fraud.
"Somali Minnesotans are our neighbors. They are part of Minnesota. And the Minnesota I know and love is so much better than this bigotry,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in response to Trump’s post.
In another post late Wednesday, Trump called El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate from Michigan, a "RADICAL Extremist” and "Terrorist Sympathizer” while endorsing Republican candidate Mike Rogers.
Democrats said Trump’s rhetoric was intended to distract voters from the impact of his policies ahead of the November U.S. midterm elections.
"He thinks he can use my name and my faith to distract us from the suffering his policies are inflicting on us at the pump, at the grocery store, and at the doctor’s office,” El-Sayed, who has faced anti-Muslim attacks from other Republicans, said Thursday.
The Michigan Democratic Party and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer described Trump’s rhetoric as desperate and racist.
Trump has previously targeted minority communities with his rhetoric, including by spreading false claims that Haitian immigrants in an Ohio town were eating pets and using the term "Palestinian” as an insult.