U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer makes wildly inaccurate claim about Somali crime on national TV
by Madison McVan, Minnesota Reformer December 4, 2025
U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer cited false statistics about the percentage of crimes committed by Somali-Americans on Fox Business Wednesday, joining a wave of Republicans engaging in anti-Somali rhetoric lately.
“It’s not that all Somalis are committing crimes, but 80% of the crimes being committed in the Twin Cities Minnesota are being committed by Somalis,” Emmer said.
That is false.
Crime statistics are complicated, as they are often based on crimes that are reported and — in the case of statistics on the race of the offender — those that are solved or result in an arrest. Law enforcement discrimination can also skew the data; a 2023 federal report following an investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department found that the agency discriminated against Black and Native American people.
Law enforcement agencies do not release data on the nationality of perpetrators, only race and ethnicity when available. That means Somali-Americans are grouped with other Black and African-American people in crime statistics.
All of those caveats considered, a state crime dashboard, filtered for crimes in the seven-county metro area, shows that 37% of people arrested since 2021 were Black. Somali-Americans comprise just a portion of the total Black population, which means Emmer’s claim is significantly off.
A Hennepin County Attorney’s Office dashboard shows that since 2018, 57% of Hennepin County cases involved a perpetrator who was Black or African-American. (The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office declined to press charges in around one-quarter of cases received by the office.)
Emmer made similar comments on Fox over the summer.
Wednesday’s remarks come after a couple of anti-Somali tirades by President Donald Trump, who at a cabinet meeting Tuesday said Somali people are “garbage.”
The Trump administration has launched an immigration enforcement campaign targeted at Somali people in the Twin Cities, sparking fear among the community and pushback from Somali leaders.
Emmer’s public comments on Minnesota’s Somali community — the largest in the nation — have shifted drastically since he defended Somali immigrants in St. Cloud a decade ago.
“If you’re asking me how I feel about immigrant populations who are in this country legally, and who are actually trying to find a better way for themselves and their families, I support it wholeheartedly. I mean, the Germans had the same problem when they came over. The Polish had the problem. The Chinese had the problem,” Emmer said at a St. Cloud town hall in 2015.
He called a proposed ban on any more Somali people moving to St. Cloud “un-American” and attempts to enforce it unconstitutional.
Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: [email protected].
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