Progressive United States congresswoman Ilhan Omar fired back at Donald Trump after the president criticized her and renewed his attacks on Minnesota’s Somali community.
During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump went on a racist tirade, describing Omar and other Somali immigrants as “garbage” and urging them to leave the US.
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“His obsession with me is creepy,” Omar wrote on social media in response. “I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
Trump has stepped up his anti-immigration rhetoric in recent weeks, particularly after the fatal shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., last month.
The suspect for the shooting is v Afghan who was evacuated from the country in 2021, after the withdrawal of American and allied forces. Trump used the shooting as a basis for cracking down on immigration from what he called “third world countries,” including Somalia.
“We will be going down the wrong path if we continue to bring garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. She is garbage. Her friends are garbage,” the US president said.
“These are not people who work. These are not people who say, ‘Let’s go, let’s go. Let’s make this place great.’ These are people who do nothing but complain. They complain, and where they came from, they got nothing.”
Trump said he “doesn’t know” Omar, but has watched him complain about the US for years. “I think she’s an incompetent person. She’s a really horrible person,” he said.
A former child refugee who fled Somalia’s long-running civil war, Omar is considered the first Somali-American to serve in the US Congress. She represents a Minnesota congressional district that contains one of the largest Somali diaspora communities in the country.
While Somalis in the U.S. suffer from higher rates of unemployment and poverty, similar to other refugee groups, the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce’s 2021 Report highlighted the community’s contributions and a trend toward upward mobility.
“While many Somali refugees arrived with limited education, low labor force participation rates and high levels of poverty, their situation has changed significantly two decades later,” the statement said.
“Poverty levels have fallen, labor force participation has increased, median household income has risen, and educational attainment has made marginal gains.”
Trump did take a number of hard-line steps in response to the National Guard shooting, including suspension of all migrations from the “third world” and ordering a review of the status of permanent residents from 19 countries.
The US president — whose first and current wives are Eastern European immigrants — also condemned immigration in general as a drain on American resources.
Minnesota’s sizable Somali community has long been in Trump’s crosshairs.
During his first term, for example, Trump implemented sweeping migration restrictions against five predominantly Muslim countries, plus North Korea and Venezuela. One of the countries covered by the so-called “Muslim ban” was Somalia.
More recently, Trump has also criticized the Somali community over a COVID-era welfare embezzlement scandal that has indicted dozens of people, including some Somali immigrants.
Omar herself has been the target of Trump’s criticism for years. He repeatedly chided her and other immigrant politicians for “telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful nation in the world, how our government is going to be run.”
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places they came from,” Trump wrote on social media in 2019.
The Trump administration recently launched an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Minnesota that it appears to be targeting Somali community.
During the Thanksgiving holiday last week, Trump sparked an outcry when he called Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz “severely retarded” and accused him of doing nothing to confront the Somali gangs allegedly “roaming the streets.”
The US president also mocked Omar by appearing to mock her Islamic headscarf, saying she is always “always wrapped in her billowing hijab”.
On Tuesday, the progressive group Democrats of Justice he condemned Trump’s attacks on Omar and the Somali community as “disgustingly racist”.
“This is all Trump knows how to do when he needs to distract from the failures of his own administration,” Justice Democrats said in a social media post.
“Incite hatred, divide our communities and send ICE to terrorize our neighbors. Pathetic.”
