Gov. Walz denounces Trump for calling Minnesota’s Somali community
‘garbage’
[December 05, 2025]
By STEVE KARNOWSKI
ST. PAUL, Minn, (AP) — Democratic Gov. Tim Walz denounced President
Donald Trump on Thursday for calling Minnesota’s Somali community
“garbage” and dismissing the state as a “hellhole.”
Walz said Trump slandered all Minnesotans and that his expressions of
contempt for the state's Somali community — the largest in the U.S. —
were “unprecedented for a United States president. We’ve got little
children going to school today who their president called them garbage.”
Republican legislative leaders stopped short of accepting the governor's
invitation to join him in condemnation, and countered that the dispute
wouldn’t have erupted if Walz had acted more effectively to prevent
fraud in social service programs.
What Trump has said about Somali people
Trump's rhetoric against Somalis in the state has intensified since a
conservative news outlet, City Journal, claimed last month that taxpayer
dollars from defrauded government programs have flowed to the Somali
militant group al-Shabab, an affiliate of al-Qaida.
On Thanksgiving, Trump called Minnesota “a hub of fraudulent money
laundering activity” and said he was terminating Temporary Protected
Status for Somalis in Minnesota, a legal safeguard against deportation
for immigrants from certain countries.
The president went further Tuesday, saying at a Cabinet meeting that he
did not want immigrants from the war-torn East African country to stay
in the U.S. “We can go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the
wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” he said.
And Trump kept it up Wednesday, saying Minnesota had become a “hellhole”
because of them. “Somalians should be out of here,” he told reporters.
“They’ve destroyed our country."
Immigration enforcement in Minnesota
Federal authorities have prepared an immigration enforcement operation
in Minnesota this week that a person familiar with the planning said
would focus on Somalis living unlawfully in the U.S.
A congressional report put the number of Somalis with protected status
at around 700 nationwide. Within that, Walz estimated the number of
Minnesota Somalis to be around 300.
Walz and community leaders said they didn’t have figures on how many
people might have been detained in recent days. The Immigration and
Customs Enforcement press office did not reply to requests for details
Wednesday or Thursday.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul area is home to about 84,000 people of Somali
descent, who make up nearly one-third of the Somalis living in the U.S.
Almost 58% of the Somalis in Minnesota were born in the U.S., and 87% of
the foreign-born Somalis in Minnesota are naturalized U.S. citizens.
Uncertainty around fraud in government programs
It's unclear how much loss there's been due to fraud schemes against
government programs in Minnesota. Many but not all of the defendants in
those cases are Somali Americans, and most are U.S. citizens.
Federal prosecutor Joe Thompson — who led the investigation into the
$300 million Feeding Our Future scandal, which has led to charges
against 78 people — estimated in an interview with KSTP-TV this summer
that the total across several programs could reach $1 billion.
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Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, speaking at a news conference on Thursday,
Dec. 4, 2025, in St. Paul, denounces President Donald Trump for
calling Minnesota's Somali community "garbage" and dismissing the
state as a "hellhole." (AP Photo/Steve Karnowski)
Walz said an audit due for completion by late January should give a
better picture, but allowed that the $1 billion figure “certainly
could be” accurate. He said his administration is taking aggressive
action to prevent additional fraud.
Republicans are treading lightly
"Demonizing an entire group of people by their race and their
ethnicity, a very group of people who contribute to the vitality —
economic, cultural — of this state is something I was hoping we’d
never have to see. This is on top of all the other vile comments,”
Walz told reporters during a briefing on the state’s budget.
Republican Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who is running for
governor and has said she hopes to win Trump's endorsement, hedged
when asked if she would condemn the president's remarks, too.
“In no way do I believe any community is all bad. Just like I don’t
believe any community is all good,” Demuth said. “What we need to do
is call the fraudsters in any community accountable for their
actions and stop it here in the state of Minnesota.”
GOP state Sen. Eric Pratt, who is running for the suburban
congressional seat being vacated by Democratic U.S. Rep. Angie
Craig, went a little further.
“It wasn’t said the way that I would have said it," Pratt said. "But
what I will say is, I share the president’s frustration in the
amount of fraud and corruption that’s effectively gone on in the
state. I mean, it’s really put a black eye on the state, and we are
in the national news for all the wrong reasons.”
Lawmakers in Ohio speak out
The president's attacks also drew condemnations Thursday from
lawmakers in Ohio, which has the second-largest Somali population in
the U.S.
“Our Somali neighbors deserve to live in a state where they are
respected for their contributions and not singled out by divisive
commentary," said state Rep. Terrence Upchurch, president of the
Ohio Legislative Black Caucus.
“President Trump’s comments about Somali immigrants are xenophobic,
dangerous and wholly unacceptable from any public official, let
alone the President of the United States," the Ohio Jewish Caucus
said in a separate statement.
___
AP reporter Julie Carr Smyth contributed to this story from
Columbus, Ohio.
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