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 for Somalis living in Minnesota is triggering fear in the state’s deeply-rooted immigrant community, along with doubts about whether the White House has the legal authority to enact the directive as described.

 late Friday, Trump said he would “immediately” strip Somali residents in Minnesota of Temporary Protected Status, a legal safeguard against deportation for immigrants from certain countries.

The announcement drew immediate pushback from some state leaders and immigration experts, who characterized Trump’s declaration as a legally dubious effort to sow fear and suspicion toward Minnesota’s 

“There’s no legal mechanism that allows the president to terminate protected status for a particular community or state that he has beef with,” said Heidi Altman, policy director at the National Immigrant Justice Center.

“This is Trump doing what he always does: demagoguing immigrants without justification or evidence and using that demagoguery in an attempt to take away important life-saving protections,” she added.

The Trump administration has until mid-January to revoke the legal protection for Somalis nationally. But that move would affect only a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of Somalis living in Minnesota. A report produced for Congress in August put the number of Somalis covered by TPS at just 705 nationwide.

“I am a citizen and so are (the) majority of Somalis in America,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minneapolis, who was born in Somalia, said in a social media post in the wake of Trump’s announcement on Friday night. “Good luck celebrating a policy change that really doesn’t have much impact on the Somalis you love to hate.”

Still, advocates warned the move could inflame hate against a community at a time of rising Islamophobia.

“This is not just a bureaucratic change,” said Jaylani Hussein, president of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “It is a political attack on the Somali and Muslim community driven by Islamophobic and hateful rhetoric.”

In his social media post, Trump claimed, without offering evidence, that Somali gangs had targeted Minnesota residents and referred to the state as a “hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.”

Trump’s statement did not include further details on the fraud he cited. Minnesota has seen dozens of people charged with defrauding social service programs in recent years, most notably stemming from the investigation into taxpayer-funded child nutrition programs under the sponsorship of the now-defunct nonprofit Feeding Our Future. 

 were announced in 2022; a 77th person 

There have also been federal charges filed this year against people for allegedly defrauding 

 programs. Some of the defendants in those cases hail from Somalia. “Accountability is coming,” Minnesota Republican Rep. Tom Emmer wrote in response to a recent story about fraud charges. In response to Trump’s move on Friday night, Emmer 

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, has noted that Minnesota consistently ranks among the safest states in the country.

“It’s not surprising that the President has chosen to broadly target an entire community,” Walz said Friday. “This is what he does to change the subject.”

In response to Trump’s announcement, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison his office was “exploring all of our options,” adding that Trump “cannot terminate TPS for just one state or on a bigoted whim.”

“Somali folks came to Minnesota fleeing conflict, instability and famine, and they have become an integral part of our state, our culture and our community,” he added.

The protection has been extended 27 times for Somalians since 1991, with U.S. authorities determining that it was unsafe for people already in the United States to return there.

Somalia for decades has been regarded as one of the world’s most dangerous countries. People have been fleeing ever since leader Siad Barre was removed in 1991 by clan-based militias and civil war erupted. The chaos later led to the rise of the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militant group, which still holds parts of the country and carries out deadly attacks in the capital, Mogadishu, and elsewhere against the fragile federal government.

Community advocates note that the Somali diaspora in Minnesota has 

 in Minneapolis and plays a prominent role in the state’s politics.

“The truth is that the Somali community is beloved and long-woven into the fabric of many neighborhoods and communities in Minnesota,” said Altman. “Destabilizing families and communities makes all of us less safe and not more.”

As part of a broader push to adopt hardline immigration policies, the Trump administration has moved to 

 that had allowed immigrants to remain in the United States and work legally.

That included ending TPS for 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians who were 

 under President Joe Biden. The Trump administration has also sought to limit protections previously extended to migrants from Cuba and Syria, among other countries.

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President Donald Trump has pledged to end temporary legal protections for Somalis in Minnesota, sparking fear in the state's immigrant community. Experts and state leaders have criticized the move as legally questionable and divisive.

Trump pledge to ‘immediately’ end protections for Minnesota Somalis sparks fear and legal questions

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