By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (Reuters) – In a burst of anti-Somali and anti-Muslim rhetoric, President Donald Trump cast the Somali American community as a threat to Minnesota on Thursday, hours after he labeled Muslim US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed 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 urged authorities in Minnesota to ask for federal intervention.
Civil rights advocates have criticized the Republican president’s rhetoric towards minorities and immigrants, including when he previously called Somalis “garbage.”
Trump has in the past repeatedly invoked a scandal in Minnesota that dates to 2020 in which scores of people were accused of defrauding millions of dollars from a state-run, federally funded child nutrition program. Many of the defendants in that case were Somali Americans.
In May, Aimee Bock, who is not a Somali immigrant and led the Minnesota non-profit group involved in the scandal, was sentenced to 41 years in prison after she was convicted last year of being the ringleader of the scheme.
The president has used the fraud case as part of his rationale for targeting Minnesota, led by Democrats, for an aggressive surge in arresting and deporting immigrants earlier this year and for moves aimed at restricting social service programs in the state, including Medicare and childcare.
Rights groups have accused Trump of using isolated fraud cases as an excuse to collectively target immigrant communities and criticized his approach to fraud, citing his pardons of those who have faced fraud convictions.
“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 on Wednesday, Trump called El-Sayed, a Muslim and the Democratic candidate for US Senate from Michigan, a “RADICAL Extremist” and “Terrorist Sympathizer” while offering support for the Republican candidate, Mike Rogers.
Democrats said Trump’s rhetoric sought to distract voters from the impact of his policies heading into the November US 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 on Thursday.
The Michigan Democratic Party and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer cast Trump’s rhetoric as desperate and racist.
Trump has targeted minorities in his rhetoric in the past as well, having previously spread false claims that Haitian immigrants in an Ohio town were eating pets and having used the term “Palestinian” as an insult.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Donna Bryson and Cynthia Osterman)
