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Progressive United States Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has hit back against Donald Trump after the president criticised her and renewed his attacks on the Somali community in Minnesota.<\/p>\n
During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump embarked on a racist tirade, describing Omar and other Somali immigrants as \u201cgarbage\u201d and calling for them to leave the US.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cHis obsession with me is creepy,\u201d Omar wrote on social media in response. \u201cI hope he gets the help he desperately needs.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump has been ramping up his anti-immigration rhetoric in recent weeks, particularly after the deadly shooting of two National Guard troops in Washington, DC, last month.<\/p>\n The suspect in the shooting is an Afghan man who was evacuated from the country in 2021, after the withdrawal of US and allied forces. Trump has used the shooting as the basis for tightening immigration from what he described as \u201cthird-world countries\u201d, including Somalia.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. She\u2019s garbage. Her friends are garbage,\u201d the US president said.<\/p>\n \u201cThese aren\u2019t people that work. These aren\u2019t people that say, \u2018Let\u2019s go, come on. Let\u2019s make this place great.\u2019 These are people that do nothing but complain. They complain, and from where they came from, they got nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump said he does not know Omar \u201cat all\u201d but has watched her complain about the US for years. \u201cI think she\u2019s an incompetent person. She\u2019s a real terrible person,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A former child refugee who fled Somalia\u2019s long-running civil war, Omar is considered the first Somali American to serve in the US Congress. She represents a congressional district in Minnesota that contains one of the largest Somali diaspora communities in the country.<\/p>\n While Somalis in the US suffer from higher unemployment and poverty rates, akin to other refugee groups, a 2021 Minnesota Chamber of Commerce Report highlighted the community\u2019s contributions and a trend towards upward mobility.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile many Somali refugees arrived with limited education, low workforce participation rates and high poverty levels, their situation two decades later has shifted significantly,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n \u201cPoverty levels have dropped, workforce participation has increased, median household income has ticked up and educational attainment has made marginal gains.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump has nevertheless taken a series of hardline steps in response to the National Guard shooting, including suspending all migration from the \u201cthird world\u201d and ordering a review of the status of permanent residents from 19 countries.<\/p>\n The US president \u2014 whose first and current wives are immigrants from Eastern Europe \u2014 has also been decrying immigration in general as a drain on US resources.<\/p>\n Minnesota\u2019s sizeable Somali community has long been in Trump\u2019s crosshairs.<\/p>\n During his first term in office, for instance, Trump implemented sweeping migration restrictions against five predominantly Muslim countries, plus North Korea and Venezuela. One of the countries swept up in the so-called \u201cMuslim ban\u201d was Somalia.<\/p>\n Recently, Trump has also criticised the Somali community for a COVID-era welfare embezzlement scandal in which dozens of people, including some Somali immigrants, have been charged.<\/p>\n Omar herself has been a years-long target of Trump\u2019s criticisms. He repeatedly berated her and other immigrant politicians for\u00a0\u201ctelling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run\u201d.<\/p>\nRecommended Stories <\/h2>\n