The Trump administration is launching an intensive immigration enforcement operation primarily targeting hundreds of undocumented Somali immigrants in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, according to an official with knowledge of the operation and documents obtained by The New York Times.
The move comes as President Trump has fixated on Somalis living in the United States, using increasingly inflammatory language to attack them. He stepped up his rhetoric in the wake of last week’s shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, even though the man suspected in the attack is an Afghan national.
The directive for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., came immediately after Mr. Trump’s remarks. The effort, which is beginning this week, focuses largely on Somalis with final deportation orders who are living in the Twin Cities, though the official said that others who are still seeking legal status could be swept up as well. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing operation.
The plan calls for the deployment of so-called strike teams, which are made up of ICE officers, agents and other federal officials. Roughly 100 officers and agents from around the country have been brought in for the operation, the official said.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said in a statement that the agency does not discuss “future or potential operations.”
“What makes someone a target of ICE is not their race or ethnicity, but the fact that they are in the country illegally,” she added.
The targeting of Somali migrants is the latest piece of Mr. Trump’s intensifying immigration crackdown across the country, one that the administration is expanding to block legal pathways for many migrants in the wake of the National Guard shooting.
At White House, Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff, has ramped up pressure to increase arrests in recent months. The targeting of migrants in the Twin Cities comes after similar efforts in other metropolitan areas across the country.
In recent months, federal officials have launched immigration operations in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Charlotte, N.C., setting off protests about what critics say are overly aggressive tactics and mistreatment by agents. D.H.S. has said that operations identify immigrants who are in the country illegally and that the enforcement actions are necessary to follow through on Mr. Trump’s promise to deport millions of undocumented migrants.
The surge of federal agents to cities has also served another purpose: to scare migrants in the hopes that they will leave the country voluntarily.
While there have not yet been images of large-scale arrests in the Minneapolis area, immigration operations often vary in scale and residents in the city have been on edge amid Mr. Trump’s increasingly dark rhetoric.
In recent days, the president has moved to end temporary legal protections for Somalis. Many of them have had the protections for decades under a program for migrants from countries in crisis.
Minnesota is home to the largest diaspora of Somalis in the world, a community whose members began migrating to the state in large numbers as the East African nation descended into civil war in the mid-1990s. Immigrant activists and local officials say that the vast majority of Minnesotans with Somali roots are American citizens or legal permanent residents.
Nationally, about 73 percent of Somali immigrants are naturalized U.S. citizens, according to the Census Bureau.
When asked by a reporter on Thursday what Somalis had to do with the accused Afghan shooter in Washington, Mr. Trump said, “Ah, nothing. But Somalis have caused a lot of trouble.”
Since his first term, Mr. Trump has attacked Somalis in derogatory, xenophobic terms.
In a social media post on Thursday night, Mr. Trump claimed that Somalis were “taking over” Minnesota and that Somali gangs were “roving the streets looking for ‘prey.’” He accused Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as someone who “probably came into the U.S.A. illegally.” Mr. Trump said she was “always wrapped in her swaddling hijab.”
In a statement, Jacklyn Rogers, a spokeswoman for Ms. Omar, said, “The congresswoman thinks his obsession with her is unhealthy and hopes he gets help.”
The president also said that Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was “seriously retarded” for welcoming immigrants from Somalia.
In a response posted on social media, Mr. Walz said: “Donald Trump is focused on pitting people against each other. The center of his agenda is cruelty — not lowering prices or making life better for Americans.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that Somalis in Minneapolis had ripped off American taxpayers, citing a New York Times report on an investigation into fraud that had taken place in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora. But just a small group of people were actually convicted of fraud. Somali Americans in the state say such broad accusations have unfairly pilloried an entire community.
Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the two largest cities in the state, have policies that bar local law enforcement officials and other municipal employees from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. But high-profile federal operations earlier this year have tested the limits of those policies.
In June, federal law enforcement agents, including immigration officials, carried out an operation in a commercial district close to downtown Minneapolis, which led to scuffles with dozens of protesters. The Minneapolis Police Department joined federal agents at the scene in an effort to de-escalate the situation, which angered some local officials and residents.
Federal officials later said the operation involved a narcotics investigation.
More recently, scores of protesters clashed with law enforcement officials during two immigration enforcement operations in Saint Paul. One, in mid-November, resulted in the arrest of 14 people at a paper distribution company.
Ernesto Londoño in St. Paul, Minn., contributed reporting.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
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