The Trump administration’s all-out war on Somali people continues.
In the latest move, the brittle and ghoulish White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced on X that President Donald Trump is ending Temporary Protected Status for Somalis.
“Somali migrants with TPS will be required to leave the country by March 17,” she wrote.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services also made this announcement on X—because this is how we live now, with the government making official proclamations on Elon Musk’s Nazi/CSAM haven.
“Country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status,” Leavitt said.
She also added some straight-up nationalist racism to the mix, just to make sure everyone knows exactly why the Trump administration is doing this.
“Further, allowing Somali nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interests. We are putting Americans first,” she said.
Huh. I wonder why the State Department still designates Somalia with a “Do Not Travel” advisory because of “crime, terrorism, civil unrest, health, kidnapping, piracy, and lack of availability of routine consular services.”
It’s so risky that the Federal Aviation Administration bans certain U.S. flights from traveling to and near Somalia.
The Trump administration is leaving no stone unturned in its quest to throw Somalis out of the United States, simply because a doddering, vicious, racist president hates Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Well, and because of his ceaseless commitment to racism.
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somali American who has long been a target of President Donald Trump’s.
The problem for the Trump team is that nearly all Somalis in the United States are citizens, which robs them of their usual line of attack against undocumented immigrants.
Nationwide, roughly 22,000 Somalis are noncitizens, but that doesn’t mean that they are undocumented. That number includes people with green cards, those protected under TPS, and others with legal status.
Trump has been threatening this for a while, as part and parcel of his wholesale war on immigrants.
Since the beginning of his second term, he has ended TPS for more than 1.5 million immigrants. But while ending TPS for Venezuelans and Haitians affects hundreds of thousands of people, only a vanishingly small number of Somalis have TPS.
In Minnesota, where the Trump administration has concentrated and escalated its war on Somali residents, a whopping 0.5% have TPS. Nationwide, it’s roughly 2,500 people—all of whom will become deportable come March 17.
Trump has also been threatening to denaturalize Somali citizens for the crime of being Somali. Such a move would indeed allow him to deport them, and it could also juice his numbers as USCIS demands that all field offices serve up 100 to 200 citizens to be denaturalized each month.
A cartoon by Clay Jones.
Just to understand how outsized that number is, between 1990 and 2017, there were roughly 11 denaturalizations per year.
The Trump administration is no doubt furious that it can’t strip citizenship from the 58% of Somalis in Minnesota who were born in the state—or the 39% who were born in the United States. Not that citizenship matters to this administration.
Even if ending TPS is somewhat symbolic given the relatively small number of people it would affect, that makes it no less terrible. The Trump administration is pulling out all the stops to drive Somalis out of the country—including laying siege to Minneapolis.
Ending TPS is just the administration’s latest racist, nationalist attack. But never fear: Trump will surely come up with another horrifying and illegal plan soon.
