President Donald Trump’s social media rant pledging to revoke Temporary Protected Status for Somali immigrants in Minnesota was an extension of the “Israel First” argument with American conservatism, a U.S. Muslim leader said.
The “Israel First” movement holds that American foreign policy should prioritize Israeli interests, compared to the “America First” wing of conservativism that seeks to put the needs of Americans ahead of foreign alliances. The conflict has been exacerbated by U.S. aid to Israel in its war in Gaza.
The Council on American-Islamic Relationships monitored a flurry of online Islamophobic conspiracy theories and accusations against Somali Muslims by “Israel First” social media influencers just ahead of Trump’s Nov. 21 TPS announcement, said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of CAIR’s chapter in the state.
Jaylani Hussein
“We believe that this is a coordinated campaign,” he said. “Multiple social media followers and ‘Israel First’ politicians are all sharing the same information within minutes. … We were anticipating the likelihood of President Trump actually putting out a tweet and eventually we saw that tweet and it targeted the TPS program.”
Trump actually used his Truth Social account for a rambling post that made unproved accusations against Minnesota’s Somali residents and Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, and misspelled his name in the process.
“Minnesota, under Governor Waltz, is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity. I am, as President of the United States, hereby terminating, effective immediately, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS Program) for Somalis in Minnesota. Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from. It’s OVER!”
But Minnesota’s 400 TPS holders should not lose hope because of the president’s pronouncement, said Alec Shaw, civil rights director for CAIR-Minnesota. “While this is a cause for concern, it is not a cause for panic. President Trump’s social media announcement on Friday has no legal effects. TPS for Somalis in Minnesota, or anywhere else in the country, has not been cancelled. It has not been terminated.”
Alec Shaw
However, the administration has a clear track record of attempting to prematurely cancel temporary status. Immigrants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria and Venezuela are among those who have been notified of terminated status. But many of those terminations have been challenged in court.
“This development is something to be taken seriously, but not to be a cause for alarm. We expect legal challenges to follow any moves that the administration actually takes to terminate TPS for Somalis,” Shaw said.
Walz was dismissive of Trump’s message. “It’s not surprising that the president has chosen to broadly target an entire community. This is what he does to change the subject.”
Close to 90,000 Somalis live in Minnesota, many of them having been resettled through the U.S. refugee program. Close to 50% of the community was born in the U.S. They work in an array of white-collar and blue-collar professions and run the gamut politically, including many who voted for Trump, said Hussein, who came to the U.S. at age 10.
But Somali-Americans also are among the leading targets of Islamophobic sentiments and actions, he said. “Minnesota leads the nation in attacks against mosques with over 40 attacks in the last four years. In 2024 alone, we had 16.”
Anti-Muslim and anti-Somali sentiment skyrocketed with the 2018 election of Minnesotan Ilhan Omar to the U.S. House of Representatives. “Since then, every time the congresswoman either engages something or doesn’t engage in anything, we see an uptick of targeted social media efforts to try to demonize and target our community,” Hussein explained.
The social media attacks that inspired Trump to threaten the community is just another example of those trends, he said. “We have seen this happen multiple times. We have seen this community targeted. We have seen this community attacked. So, we have always been on guard, we have always been monitoring the situation, and we’ve always been under threat.”
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