Photo: Alamy
White House border czar Tom Homan on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota, saying the state includes “a large illegal Somali community,” despite local officials arguing that most Somali immigrants are U.S. citizens.
Homan rejected claims that Immigration and Customs Enforcement increased operations in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area were in response to President Trump’s recent remarks, in which the president referred to Somali immigrants as “garbage” who should be removed. He also said ICE officers are not conducting arrests based on appearance.
“I’m not aware of what President Trump was thinking when he said that,” Homan told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But I agree with President Trump. From day one, he has said we are concentrated on public safety threats and national security threats. We also know there’s a large illegal Somali community there, that there’s a large illegal alien community there. We’re going to arrest every illegal alien that we find there.”
Roughly 80,000 Somalis live in Minnesota, largely in the Twin Cities area. Local officials, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, have emphasized that most are citizens who arrived as refugees from Somalia’s civil war.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also addressed the Minnesota crackdown on welfare fraud among Somalis in a separate interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
“When you come to this country, you’ve got to learn which side of the road to drive on. You’ve got to learn to stop at stop signs, and you’ve got to learn not to defraud the American people,” he stated.
When asked about fraud in Minnesota, Bessent noted, “to be clear, the initial fraud that was discovered by the IRS for which I’m the Acting Commissioner- is discovered by IRS Criminal Investigations Unit. This was not an endogenous thing that the state of Minnesota decided. We had to go in and clean up the mess for them, and this is part of the continued cleanup.” He said the investigation is ongoing and more work will be unveiled in the weeks ahead.