Commentary: Bigotry against Somali Minnesota voters was a losing strategy

President Donald Trump has called Somali Americans “garbage.” He’s said they are “low IQ” but somehow also the “number one buyers of Mercedes-Benz and BMWs.” 

This was not surprising, if you know Trump’s history. The Nixon administration successfully sued Trump and his father — Trump is a nepo baby, bigly — for systematically discriminating against Black and Puerto Rican renters as part of their vast outer borough real estate operations. 

Now, he is the government, and he sent 3,000 armed, masked, ill-trained immigration agents here with an unclear objective, so they roamed the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, routinely racially profiling people, demanding their papers. Nearly 84% of Somali Minnesotans are citizens as of 2023, and they responded this election season with stoicism — and power — by going to the polls in huge numbers.

According to data compiled by retired journalist David Brauer, the heart of Cedar-Riverside in Ward 6 saw turnout that surpassed 2024, an unusual outcome given the typically greater intensity of presidential elections. In precinct 3, turnout was 135% of 2024, yielding an extra 548 votes. In precinct 9, turnout was 125% of 2024, yielding an additional 336 votes.  

And based on Reformer interviews with voters conducted by our contributor Atra Mohamed, we can be certain what motivated these voters. 

Halima Elmi, 53, a healthcare worker and mother of four, said during Operation Metro Surge she and her daughter went to a rental car company and encountered ICE agents in the parking lot. Masked men jumped out of a black van, grabbed them and pushed them in. She said they didn’t even give them a chance to produce their documents. “We screamed, and the rental car staff who were expecting us came and told them this was private property and that they were not allowed to pick up people here. In the meantime, we produced our passports, and they finally left us alone.” 

Elmi spent a lot of time volunteering this fall, taking people to the polls, she said.

Najma Tohu, 28, an entrepreneur and Whittier neighborhood resident, called Trump’s comments “a disgrace.” 

“Somali people have jobs and businesses and pay taxes like anyone else, and for him to say that we don’t work and live off government resources is a lie and disrespectful,” she said.

Faduma Abdi, 40, a mother of three who lives in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood and works at a nursing home, said she previously voted to fulfill her civic duty, but Tuesday she voted to fight back against Trump by voting for every Democratic candidate on the ballot.

“Trump targeted us, and now we have the opportunity to fight back. He called us ‘garbage.’ And that’s not acceptable,” Abdi said.

Hibo Muse, 28, is a healthcare worker and Cedar-Riverside resident who voted for Trump in 2024. This year, she voted all Democratic-Farmer-Labor.

“I regretted voting for him. I feel as though I’m part of all the pain and suffering that Trump caused,” Muse said.

She said she wants candidates in office who respect and treat all Americans equally.

Trump’s hateful rhetoric, which his followers parroted, didn’t help Minnesota Republicans break their two-decade losing streak in statewide races. And every Minnesota House district voted more blue than in 2024. 

I’m sure it was mostly driven by the cost of food and fuel, and the naked corruption of the Trump administration and their cronies, but forgive my idealism if I also believe that Minnesotans also sought to send a message against his bigotry. 

The looting of the pandemic-era food relief program known as Feeding Our Future and some of our Medicaid programs is a big deal, which is why the Reformer has reported on it, and it’s why I editorialized on the issue beginning in 2023, when I could sense the Democratic establishment was negligent in confronting it. We were the first outlet I’m aware of, in 2024, to publish a piece by a Somali Minnesotan about the uncomfortable fact that nearly all of the people convicted in the Feeding Our Future scandal were of East African descent. If the Walz administration and the Legislature had fixed the problem sooner, that may have prevented it from becoming fodder for racist demagoguery. 

But that doesn’t change the fact that you don’t judge an entire community on the actions of a few, as most of us learned in elementary school. 

And, it was a little hard to take MAGA’s concerns about fraud seriously when KARE 11 reported last month that the Trump administration paid private prison operator CoreCivic $495 million for the Appleton prison — after the company offered to sell it to the state just a year prior for $75 million. CoreCivic gave $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee. 

The word “garbage” is an apt descriptor, but not of my Somali neighbors.