Progressive U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar has fired back after President Donald Trump criticized her and renewed attacks on Minnesota’s Somali community.
At Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, President Trump launched a racist attack, calling Omar and other Somali immigrants “trash” and calling for them to leave the United States.
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“His obsession with me is creepy,” Omar responded on social media. “I hope he gets the help he so desperately needs.”
President Trump has stepped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric in recent weeks, particularly in the wake of the shooting deaths of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., last month.
The suspect in the shooting was an Afghan man who had fled the country in 2021 after the withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces. President Trump has used the shooting as a basis for tightening restrictions on immigration from what he calls “Third World countries,” including Somalia.
“If we continue to bring trash into our country, we’re going in the wrong direction. Ilhan Omar is trash. She’s trash. Her friends are trash,” the US president said.
“They’re not the people who work. They’re not the people who say, ‘Come on, let’s make this place great.'” They’re the people who complain. They complain, but no matter where they come from, they get nothing. ”
President Trump said he doesn’t know Omar “at all” but has watched her complain about the United States for years. “I think she’s an incompetent person. She’s a really terrible person,” he said.
Omar, a former child refugee who fled Somalia’s long-running civil war, is considered the first Somali-American to serve in the U.S. Congress. She represents a Minnesota congressional district that includes one of the country’s largest Somali diaspora communities.
Although Somalis in the United States suffer from high unemployment and poverty rates like other refugee groups, the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce’s 2021 report highlights community contributions and upward trends in mobility.
“Many Somali refugees arrived with limited education, low labor force participation rates and high poverty levels, but 20 years later their situation has changed significantly,” the report said.
“Poverty levels have fallen, labor force participation rates have increased, median household income has risen, and educational attainment has risen modestly.”
Nevertheless, President Trump took a series of tough measures in the wake of the National Guard shooting, including halting all immigration from the “Third World” and ordering a review of permanent resident status in 19 countries.
The US president, whose ex-wife and current wife are immigrants from Eastern Europe, has criticized immigration in general as a waste of US resources.
Minnesota’s large Somali community has long been a target of President Trump.
For example, during his first term, President Trump implemented major immigration restrictions in five Muslim-majority countries, plus North Korea and Venezuela. One of the countries affected by the so-called “Muslim ban” was Somalia.
President Trump also recently criticized the Somali community for the coronavirus-era welfare embezzlement scandal in which dozens of people, including some Somali immigrants, were indicted.
Omar herself has long been a target of President Trump’s criticism. He repeatedly accused her and other immigrant politicians of “telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful nation on earth, how our government should be run.”
“Why don’t they go back and repair the completely destroyed and crime-infested place they came from?” President Trump wrote on social media in 2019.
The Trump administration recently launched an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Minnesota that appears to be targeting the Somali community.
During last week’s Thanksgiving holiday, President Trump sparked a backlash by calling Minnesota Governor Tim Walz “deeply retarded” and accusing him of doing nothing to confront Somali gangs allegedly “prowling our streets.”
The US president also teased Omar, saying she was “always wrapped up in a swaddled hijab,” as if to mock her for wearing an Islamic headscarf.
On Tuesday, the progressive group Justice Democrats called Trump’s attacks on Omar and the Somali community “disgustingly racist.”
“This is the only thing President Trump knows what to do when he needs to distract from his administration’s failures,” Justice Democrats said in a social media post.
“They’re sending ICE to incite hatred, divide our communities, and terrorize our neighbors. It’s pathetic.”
