‘Somalis are the scapegoat’: fear rises as Trump targets Minneapolis community | Minneapolis

OhAs of Tuesday morning, only a few stalls were open among the dozens that normally sell food, rugs, clothing and jewelry at Karmel Mall, a Somali community center in Minneapolis. Longtime Minnesotans said they have never seen the mall as quiet as it has been in recent days, almost shockingly still.

Unrest has been replaced by unease and fear over the Trump administration’s threat to Somalis and the growing number of immigration agents in the city tasked with targeting Somalis for deportation.

On a typical weekday morning, people were shopping, eating breakfast, aunts were selling rugs, skirts or scarves, said Zaynab Mohamed, a Minnesota state senator and Somali-American. Now people stay at home if they can afford it. “People don’t want to deal with ICE agents coming into their businesses and violating their rights,” she said.

Outside the mall, volunteer supervisors watched for signs of ICE activity, ready to alert text chains and start filming if agents came looking for one of their neighbors. Signs at mall entrances warn that ICE cannot enter without a court order.

“If we see any suspicious activity, or specifically an attempted kidnapping, we record it, alert the relevant channels and blow the whistle to disrupt that, which I had to do last Thursday,” said Miri Villerius, who had been keeping vigil for hours on Tuesday in the winter cold.

In the week since Trump launched an aggressive, xenophobic attack on the Somali community, local Somali residents have changed their lifestyle: staying home, carrying papers if they are away, and skipping appointments.

Abdullahi Abdulle, a U.S. Army veteran and citizen of Somali descent, said there is a very real fear that people will be arrested simply for looking Somali. He carries several photos from his passport.

“At this point, the Somalis are the scapegoat – they don’t look like us, they have a different faith, let’s make them the dangerous bogeyman,” he said. “That’s the intention here.”

Trump did not differentiate between citizens and non-citizens when he called the entire Somali community “trash” and said he wanted them to leave the country, then called on state immigration officials to search them for deportation. About 84,000 people of Somali descent live in Minnesota, and most of them are U.S. citizens or legal residents.

Perhaps due to the high percentage of U.S. citizens and legal residents, the operation was “both dispersed and even chaotic,” Mayor Jacob Frey said. “It’s not like there’s a factory or meatpacking plant where they can detain large numbers of Somali immigrants.” The Department of Homeland Security said on December 4 that it had arrested “some of the worst illegal alien criminals.”

Local leaders, largely Democrats, have spoken out on behalf of Somalis and said they are welcome here, pushing back on stories about recent fraud cases involving Somali perpetrators and saying they are not representative of the whole.

“Obviously, Minneapolis loves Minneapolis,” Frey told the Guardian. “We love our family members, we love our neighbors and we stand with them. And I think that’s the response you’re seeing right now.”

Mohamed implored his colleagues, including Republicans, to stand up for Somalis. Only one Republican lawmaker did so, Sen. Jim Abeler, who pushed back against Trump as trash.

“The Somalis I know, and I know many, are nothing like that,” Abeler said. “They are businessmen, drivers, hourly workers to support their families, investors, nurses, students and religious people. No man, woman or child is more or less in the eyes of our Lord God most high, and none of them is trash.”

The Department of Homeland Security’s crackdown, dubbed Operation Metro Surge, came after right-wing media outlets ramped up their coverage of ongoing social services fraud cases in Minnesota. Many of those charged are of Somali origin. But Trump’s aggression is not about fraud, Mohamed said.

When members of other communities commit crimes, they are treated as individuals and not as representatives of the community as a whole. Trump made it clear he was talking about all Somalis — including his attempt to remove U.S. citizens, she said.

“The fraud that has occurred in our state harms all taxpayers, regardless of race, and Somalis are also victims of this fraud,” she said.

Stories of detained U.S. citizens — including a woman who local media reported was detained for more than 24 hours until her husband could bring his passport card — have circulated within the community.

“You only hear about this in dictatorships and apartheid states and that sort of thing,” said Amiin Harun, an immigration lawyer in Minneapolis, “But in the United States, having people carry their passports around to show their status? Scary.”

Friday prayers, usually reserved for large gatherings, are “half empty,” Harun said. It’s difficult to advise people to stay home — they need to work, support themselves and their families, live their lives, he said. Yet many are “simply afraid to leave their homes and go to public places,” he said.

Munira Maalimisaq, a nurse practitioner who founded the Inspire Change clinic in Minneapolis, said her patients were canceling appointments because of ICE’s presence in the area. She launched a rapid response program in which the medical community can help people by offering telehealth appointments, house calls or trips to clinics.

Those who avoided the clinic included a man with a bedsore who had a fever and was vomiting, a woman who fell and broke her ankle, and an elderly woman who had lived in Minnesota for decades and feared her son would be picked up if he drove her to the clinic.