post<\/a>, Trump wrote that \u201cmuch of Minnesota Fraud, up to 90%, is caused by people that came into our Country, illegally, from Somalia\u201d.<\/p>\nHe also repeated attacks on Somali American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, calling her \u201cone of the many scammers\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cSend them back from where they came, Somalia, perhaps the worst, and most corrupt, country on earth,\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in an interview on Fox News that the administration was \u201clooking at\u201d possibly revoking citizenship from Somali Americans convicted of fraud.<\/p>\n
She said that denaturalisation remained \u201ca tool at the president and the secretary of state\u2019s disposal\u201d.<\/p>\n
Trump and his allies have repeatedly threatened to strip citizenship from an array of naturalised citizens: those born outside the US but who acquire citizenship through the government\u2019s immigration processes.<\/p>\n
While legal experts have noted that citizenship can be stripped from foreign-born citizens, the practice is exceedingly rare and often requires a high burden of proof, showing an individual was naturalised under false pretences.<\/p>\n
Heightened scrutiny<\/h2>\n
Trump has regularly demonised immigrant communities throughout his political career.<\/p>\n
That rhetoric was a hallmark stretching back to his first successful bid for president in 2016. While on the campaign trail, in 2015, he claimed that Mexico was sending \u201crapists\u201d and criminals across the southern border into the US, spurring outrage.<\/p>\n
Later, during his presidential run in 2024, he repeated baseless claims against Haitians living in Illinois, including that they were killing and eating pets.<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, Trump has focused on Somali Americans, comparing them to \u201cgarbage\u201d and criticising the legal pathways that allowed them into the country. He further claimed they were \u201cdestroying America\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers, community groups, and political organisations decried Trump\u2019s statements as blatantly racist.<\/p>\n
But Trump has accompanied his rhetoric with action. Over the past month, his administration has surged immigration enforcement agents to Minnesota, conducted a wide-scale audit of legal Somali immigrants, and prioritised investigations of fraud claims in the state.<\/p>\n
His efforts have seized upon a scandal that has rattled the midwestern state in recent years.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors have alleged that criminals have defrauded the state of approximately $9bn in misused social assistance funding and nearly $300m in misused COVID funding.<\/p>\n
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday said the Justice Department has charged 98 individuals in Minnesota as part of its wide-ranging fraud investigation, adding that 85 of those charged were of \u201cSomali descent\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, many of those charges pre-date Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has also shot back that local and federal authorities have spent years combatting fraud in the state, which he called a \u201cserious issue\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a post on the social media platform X on Wednesday, Walz said Trump is \u201cusing an issue he doesn\u2019t give a damn about as an excuse to hurt working Minnesotans\u201d.<\/p>\n
Some of the Trump administration\u2019s actions have come in the wake of a viral video uploaded by conservative YouTube Nick Shirley, who claimed Somali American-run daycare centres in Minneapolis had committed up to $100m in fraud.<\/p>\n
Shirley\u2019s video has received 127 million views on X, and administration officials, including Bondi, have repeatedly cited his claims.<\/p>\n
For instance, on Tuesday, FBI Director Kash Patel said in a social media post that his organisation \u201cis aware of recent social media reports in Minnesota\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added that the bureau had \u201csurged personnel and investigative resources to Minnesota to dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programmes\u201d.<\/p>\n
Still, questions have arisen over the accuracy of Shirley\u2019s video.<\/p>\n
An investigation by CBS News this week found that \u201call but two\u201d of the daycares featured in the video had active licences and \u201cwere visited by state regulators within the last six months\u201d.<\/p>\n
Those regulators issued several citations, according to the report, but \u201cthere was no recorded evidence of fraud\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United States President Donald Trump has unleashed another attack on Somali Americans, with the White House saying the administration is reviewing plans to strip citizenship from those convicted of fraud. The statements on Wednesday came a day after the Trump administration froze $185m in federal subsidies for low-income childcare amid claims of fraud at daycares […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}