President Donald Trump on Tuesday ripped Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., as “garbage” and said Somalis should “go back to where they came from” during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. His remarks come on the heels of several reports alleging widespread Medicaid fraud among the country’s largest Somali community in Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Minnesota congressional district.
“I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, OK. Somebody will say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason,” he said.
“Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country,” Trump said of the historically failed nation.
“With Somalia, which is barely a country, you know, they have no, they have no anything. They just run around killing each other. There’s no structure,” he said before turning to Omar, a left-wing Democrat who has repeatedly criticized the U.S.
“I always watch her,” Trump said, saying she “hates everybody. And I think she’s an incompetent person. She’s a real terrible person.”
As for Omar, she responded on social media along with a video of Trump’s remarks: “His obsession with me is creepy. I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
“I can say that about other countries, too,” he added, as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sat nearby. In a social media post Monday night, Noem said, “I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”
Later in the meeting, Trump referred to Omar as “garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people that work. These aren’t people that say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’ These are people that do nothing but complain.”
“You know, if they came from paradise, and they said, ‘This isn’t paradise,’ but when they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but b—-, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” he added.
Trump’s comments came as a senior law enforcement official told NBC News that Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to conduct an operation in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area this week. The official said ICE is not specifically targeting the Somali community but may arrest some Somali nationals who are found to be in violation of U.S. immigration laws.
The planned operation was first reported by The New York Times.
The president’s remarks about Somalia were made at the end of the public portion of a Cabinet meeting that lasted more than two hours, after a reporter asked whether Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz should resign in connection with widespread fraud involving Covid relief funds in the state.
The New York Times has reported that 59 people — most of them from Somalia — have been convicted in recent years on criminal charges linked to the fraud schemes, which prosecutors say generated more than $1 billion in illicit payments from taxpayer-supported programs.
Trump said, “Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars, billions, every year, billions of dollars, and they contribute nothing.”
Nearly 500 employees in Minnesota’s state government say Walz ignored repeated internal warnings about large-scale fraud involving state aid programs within the Somali community, and that he retaliated against staff who raised concerns.
The employees, who work within the state Department of Human Services, have for several years operated an anonymous X account outlining what they describe as ongoing cases of fraud and misuse of public funds. The group has previously directed warnings to state leaders and to Minnesota residents about patterns of financial abuse they say they identified in program oversight.
In a new post, the employees alleged that Walz not only failed to act on their alerts but also took punitive measures against staff members who attempted to report the issues through official channels.
