In Tim Walz’s home state, Somali immigrants push back on GOP refugee rhetoric

MINNEAPOLIS – Amid the chatter of mid-day grocery runs and pharmacy orders being filled at Afrik Grocery in Minneapolis' Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, Fardousa Yossuf stuck out her hand and introduced herself as "a storyteller."

Her story in this adopted home began in 1999, where she came after fleeing the civil war in Somalia. In the years since, she has noticed big changes: Minneapolis is bigger and more prosperous now, and "it's because of the immigrants," said the 59-year-old who now teaches Somali language in the local public schools. "We are really contributing to the betterment of the country."

But now her community has once again become a point of focus in conservative circles since Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris chose Minnesota's governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate.

Within hours of Harris announcing her pick, social media was riddled with the false rumor that Walz fashioned the state’s new flag to resemble Somalia’s. Stephen Miller, former senior Trump advisor and a close confidante, piled on by saying Harris and Walz planned to “turn the entire Midwest into Mogadishu,” the capital city of Somalia. An article from Fox News published a week after the VP announcement suggested Walz’s immigration policy contributed to a rise in Somali gangs.

These attacks aren't new. Former President Donald Trump has specifically targeted Somali immigrants in every campaign cycle in Minnesota since he first ran for president in 2016, a local variation on the anti-immigration rhetoric he's long embraced. Before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Trump's team claimed Republicans would win the reliably blue state this November, as they said in 2020.

A key difference is that a brand new Democratic ticket has given Trump an opening to go after Harris and Walz on their biggest Achilles' heel: immigration and the border.

The rhetoric is just "politics," Yossuf said in an interview just days before Walz would formally accept his party's nomination some 400 miles away at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

But she said she has also noticed a few of Trump's campaign promises have rattled members of the Minnesotan immigrant community, including the 2024 Republican presidential nominee's proposal to enact mass deportations and reinstitute a travel ban on majority-Muslim countries. Others who spoke with USA TODAY similarly expressed concerns that anti-immigrant rhetoric in this year's election could create a more hostile environment for transplants.

"Making people fear all that, I think, is wrong," she said. Most of the East African immigrants she knows fled hardship, are in the U.S. legally, and are working hard and paying taxes, thanks to refugee resettlement policies, she said. "So to demean them and make that they are nothing, it’s not right.”

At least 44,000 Minnesota residents were born in Somalia and another 29,000 first-generation Somali Americans call the state home, according to data compiled by Minnesota Compass.

In the decades since the first wave of Somali migrants came to the state, they have established flourishing cultural and business districts, sent their children to its colleges and universities, and elected leaders from their own communities to Minnesota's city councils, mayorships, legislature and to the U.S. Congress.

They have also been met with some resistance in the predominantly white and Christian Midwest state of 5.7 million people – including everything from violent threats and vandalism to general racial and religious tensions. Somali immigrants have been the focus of local efforts to stop refugee resettlement and have feared targeting by local police. The community's most high-profile elected official – U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. – has been a frequent target of anti-Muslim threats and rumors, including from Trump himself.

Still, most Minnesotans have been welcoming, according to around a dozen Minnesota Somali community members, leaders and allies who spoke with USA TODAY, and generous state policies for refugee resettlement, most recently championed by Walz, has made the state a popular destination for East Africans fleeing dangerous conditions back home.

In the national political spotlight

During a visit to Minnesota in July – for a campaign rally in St. Cloud, where some local opposition to Somali refugee resettlement has gained national attention – Trump said Harris wants to “deposit thousands of jihadist sympathizers in Minnesota.”

“You know that, you already have enough,” he added. “I mean, how the hell do you have these Congresspeople elected – Ilhan Omar,” who is the first Somali American to serve in Congress.

"On Day 1 of the Trump presidency, I will restore the travel ban, suspend refugee admission, stop the resettlement, and keep the terrorists the hell out of our country," he added, referencing the 2017 travel ban from majority-Muslim countries – including Somalia – as he addressed the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas against Israel.

In a statement to USA TODAY, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Harris is allowing "a border invasion of illegal immigrants from all over the world."

"It's hurting ALL Americans, regardless of race, and ESPECIALLY minority Americans in inner cities, where illegal immigrants are taking up housing supply and committing heinous crimes," she said. "President Trump wants to put ALL American citizens first, including those who LEGALLY immigrated to this country."

Salman Fiqy, a Republican who recently lost a state House primary, supports Trump and attended the rally in St. Cloud. He argued Republicans could win over Somali voters, who often share socially conservative values with the GOP, if they took a different approach.

“It’s the same mistake that they did in 2020. I think it’s very, very sad,” Fiqy said. Biden won Minnesota in 2020 by 7.2 percentage points. “I was thinking that the Republican Party is going to wise up this time around, that they would tone down that populist, race-based, ethnic-based politics to rally up their voter base. I think that’s the reason why now they’re losing momentum, honestly.”

Welcoming policy, economy bring refugees to Minnesota

In the Minneapolis Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, nicknamed “Little Mogadishu,” immigrants and their families dine at Somali restaurants filled with the smells of cumin, coriander and turmeric, shop at grocery stores stocked with everything from halal meats and halwa to camel milk, and advertise for local political campaigns, social services and community events in both Somali and English.

Nearby, a spacious indoor mall is packed with stalls selling Somali clothing, housewares, food and services to help new immigrants send money to loved ones in East Africa. Calls to prayer play five times per day over the loudspeaker and echo through the winding hallways, inviting shoppers to the mosque upstairs.

It's a sliver of the expansive Somali community that grew in Minnesota because of the state's generous social services, good public schools, low housing costs and plentiful employment opportunities, said Ahmed "Jaffer" Mohamed, a refugee resettlement coordinator for the Minnesota Council of Churches. In addition to the large number of Somali residents, Minnesota is home to the country’s second-largest Hmong population, who fled Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War.

Walz did not initiate those policies, but he has expanded upon them in the nearly six years since he's been in office. When Trump as president signed an executive order in 2019 allowing state and local governments more power to reject incoming refugees, Walz approved continued resettlements. Later, Walz approved programs providing drivers licenses, free college tuition and health insurance to undocumented immigrants.

"Minnesota has a strong moral tradition of welcoming those who seek refuge," Walz wrote in a letter to the Trump administration's State Department affirming that the state would continue to accept refugees. "Refugees strengthen our communities. Bringing new cultures and fresh perspectives, they contribute to the social fabric of our state. Opening businesses and supporting existing ones, they are critical to the success of our economy."

The Harris-Walz campaign did not respond to requests for comment from USA TODAY for this story.

Rich Stanek, a Republican who served as Hennepin County Sheriff from 2007 to 2019, said he believes it's a good thing that Minnesota is a welcoming state, but he still criticized Walz's tenure.

"The issue is, Gov. Walz, under his administration the last six years has been so welcoming to the extent that he's cut out local law enforcement," he said. He cited Walz's letter welcoming additional migrants and said he didn't tell police "when they're coming, who's coming, doesn't give us the names, doesn't tell us how they fare in terms of being in the country legally, illegally."

Most Somali residents who spoke with USA TODAY said they hadn't heard what Trump and conservative commentators were saying about refugees in Minnesota. But they also didn't say they were surprised.

Ahmed Ali, 32, moved to Mankato – where Walz himself lived for decades – from Somalia nearly five years ago. He thinks Walz has been a good governor, especially because of the school lunch program he approved last year, but had a conversation recently with a neighbor who disagreed, saying he has done too much to support undocumented immigrants.

Asked how that felt as an immigrant himself, Ali said his neighbor "has the right to question who is coming into this country if that is affecting him, the way he lives. If there is going to be job competition, you have the right to ask. If there is a resources issue, do we have the resources to accommodate people?”

But he said Trump is “trying to scare the Midwestern people” with comments like those he made in St. Cloud.

“There’s a lot of people who are not open minded, people who never travel, people who are never exposed to other cultures,” he said. “Those people may believe what Donald Trump may say.”

Changing attitudes on welcoming immigrants

Periodically, white Minnesota residents renew complaints against their Somali neighbors or a scandal deepens distrust. A decade ago, dozens of Somali youth were targeted in jihadi recruitment, something that even got the attention of the Obama administration. Recently, Minnesotan Somalis were at the nexus of a massive fraud case involving a nonprofit taking advantage of federal COVID relief funding - a topic that House Republicans in Washington are now investigating.

“Somalis are just like other human beings. There are criminals among them, there are towering civic figures among them,” said Abdi Ismail Samatar, a geography professor at the University of Minnesota who came to the U.S. from Somalia.

Overall, “the population in Minnesota are very thoughtful people,” Samatar said, and make judgments based on their own experiences – now, decades since their migration to Minnesota began, with Somali community members working at every professional level.

“For former President Trump to use Somalis as bait says more about him than it says about the country and the communities he’s talking to," Samatar said.

For example, in St. Cloud, where Trump held his most recent rally and where Somali refugee resettlement has been a point of contention for years, candidates championing restrictions on refugee resettlement have lost elections in recent years. Now two Somali candidates are running for a seat on the local city council, beating out ten other candidates in a crowded primary last month.

Hamse Warfa is a Somali Minnesotan who previously worked in state government for the Walz administration and at the State Department under President Joe Biden. He is now volunteering for the Walz campaign around the country.

How welcoming native-born Minnesotans have been has ebbed and flowed over time, Warfa said. "I feel as it gets closer to the election, unfortunately there are some politicians that create more divisions."

"I'm a strong believer that everything rises or falls on leadership," he said. He visited St. Cloud a few weeks before Trump to speak to the local Somali community: "My message to Somali Americans was that this is your country as much as it is for Donald Trump."

Yossuf, the Somali teacher, said she has come to that conclusion herself.

"People who have seen a lot of problems really are the best citizens," she said. "We are very committed to vote because we have seen what without democracy is."

She remembered the authoritarianism and violent rivalries that drove the Somali diaspora for decades, and argued that racial, religious and ethnic divisions in the U.S. can get in the way of all the opportunity her adopted home has to offer.

"I have seen Arabia, I have seen Europe, I have seen Africa. I really feel America is the best country. If you follow the rules and do the best you can, you really reach very high," Yossuf said. "It's the only place I feel when people say the sky is the limit, it's true."

Yossuf described herself as a storyteller because she reads and sings to children in Somali at the local library, or maybe, as she said with a laugh, because she "likes to talk." But she also tells her peers as often as she can about the rights they have in their new home in Minnesota and the United States, to vote and to tell the nation their own story – regardless of who holds the microphone on the campaign trail.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: In Tim Walz’s home state, Somali immigrants push back on GOP attacks