President Donald Trump has launched a new attack on Somali-Americans, with the White House announcing that the administration is considering plans to strip citizenship from people convicted of fraud.
Wednesday’s statement came a day after the Trump administration froze $185 million in federal aid for low-income child care following allegations of fraud at a Somali-American-run day care center in Minneapolis, Minnesota’s largest city.
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“Many of the fraud cases in Minnesota, up to 90%, are committed by people who entered the country illegally from Somalia,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
He also repeatedly attacked Somali-American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, calling her “one of many fraudsters.”
“We want them sent back to where they came from, Somalia, which is probably the worst and most corrupt country on Earth,” Trump wrote.
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt said in an interview on Fox News that the administration is “considering” the possibility of stripping citizenship from Somali Americans convicted of fraud.
She said denaturalization remains “a tool at the disposal of the president and secretary of state.”
President Trump and his allies have repeatedly threatened to strip citizenship from a group of naturalized citizens, people who were born outside the United States but obtained citizenship through the government’s immigration process.
Legal experts have noted that citizenship can be stripped from foreign-born nationals, but such actions are extremely rare and often require a high burden of proof to prove that an individual naturalized under false pretenses.
Enhanced monitoring
Trump has regularly demonized immigrant communities throughout his political career.
This rhetoric has been a hallmark of his first presidential bid in 2016. During his campaign in 2015, he sparked outrage by claiming that Mexico was sending “rapists” and criminals across the southern border into the United States.
Later, while running for president in 2024, he made repeated baseless claims, including that Haitians living in Illinois were killing and eating pets.
In recent weeks, President Trump has focused on Somali-Americans, likening them to “trash” and criticizing the legal means to allow them into the country. He further claimed that they were “destroying America.”
Lawmakers, community groups and political groups condemned Trump’s comments as blatantly racist.
But Trump matched that rhetoric with action. Over the past month, the administration has rushed immigration enforcement agents to Minnesota, conducted a major audit of legal Somali immigrants, and prioritized investigating fraud charges in the state.
His efforts captured the scandals that have rocked Midwestern states in recent years.
Prosecutors allege the criminals defrauded the state of about $9 billion in misappropriated social assistance funds and about $300 million in misappropriated coronavirus funds.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday that the Justice Department has indicted 98 people in Minnesota as part of a broader fraud investigation, adding that 85 of those indicted were of “Somali descent.”
But many of those charges predate President Trump’s second term.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz also countered that local and federal authorities have spent years combating fraud in the state, calling it a “serious problem.”
Walz said in a post on social media platform X on Wednesday that President Trump is “using an issue he doesn’t care about as an excuse to hurt working Minnesotans.”
Some of the Trump administration’s actions followed a viral video uploaded by conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley alleging up to $100 million in fraud at a Somali-American-run child care center in Minneapolis.
Mr. Shirley’s video about X has been viewed 127 million times, and administration officials, including Mr. Bondi, have repeatedly cited his claims.
For example, on Tuesday, FBI Director Kash Patel said in a social media post that his organization was “aware of recent social media reporting in Minnesota.”
The agency added, “We have rapidly committed personnel and investigative resources to Minnesota to dismantle a large-scale fraud scheme that exploited federal programs.”
Still, questions have been raised about the accuracy of Shirley’s video.
An investigation by CBS News this week found that “all but two” of the daycare centers featured in the video had valid licenses and had “received a visit from state regulators within the past six months.”
Those regulators issued several citations, but “no evidence of wrongdoing was recorded,” according to the report.
