The Trump administration
is waging a multi-pronged war on Somali people, painting them as criminals, murderers, and terrorists and using multiple federal agencies to target them at home and abroad. The campaign includes military attacks in Somalia, as well as arrests, deportations, and the weaponization of federal law enforcement agencies against immigrants and the Somali American community in the United States, including the recent use of Homeland Security agents as a goon squad to target Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
In his second term, President Donald Trump has routinely cast Somalia as
lawless
and Somalis as
violent
. Meanwhile, his administration has, largely without public knowledge, killed hundreds of people in Somalia, claiming they belong to terror groups. Trump personally
ordered the death
of a Somali man within days of regaining the White House, according to his
counterterrorism
czar Sebastian Gorka. The administration claimed, without offering any evidence, that the man was connected with the Islamic State terror group. Trump has sought to
do the same
with Omar.
Homeland Security agents raided Omar’s Washington, D.C., home last Monday,
three weeks before the midterms
, in which she is seeking reelection. The Trump administration reportedly launched the investigation to build a case to strip Omar of her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her. (Omar fled war in Somalia with her family when she was 8 years old, later immigrated to the U.S.
as a refugee
, and became a citizen in 2000.) The administration has also issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to some of Omar’s relatives. On Monday, conservative media outlets reported that federal prosecutors obtained Omar’s DNA as part of their investigation.
“This is what happens in a dictatorship. The leader identifies his political, ethnic and religious enemies, and his agents scramble to do his bidding and make him happy,” Zaynab Mohamed, a Somali immigrant who represents Minn
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