President Donald Trump said Friday evening that he is terminating deportation protections for Somali nationals in Minnesota, saying the change would take effect “immediately.”
In a post on Truth Social, Trump alleged that Minnesota — led by Governor Tim Walz — has become “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.” He then declared that he was ending the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for Somalis living in the state.
Trump also claimed that “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people” of Minnesota and asserted that “BILLIONS of Dollars are missing,” adding that Somali migrants should be sent back and that the protections were “OVER.”
Minnesota is home to one of the largest Somali communities in the United States. TPS grants certain foreign nationals temporary legal permission to live and work in the country when their home nation is deemed unsafe due to conflict or other extraordinary conditions.
The announcement comes amid renewed scrutiny around fraud cases in the state. In recent years, Minnesota has faced major allegations of misuse of public funds, including the Feeding Our Future scandal, in which hundreds of millions of dollars in COVID-19 aid were allegedly embezzled.
A new report from the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, claims that some money tied to the Feeding Our Future scheme may have been routed to al-Shabaab, a militant group based in Somalia. According to the report’s authors, Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo, their investigation identified overlapping fraud networks involving Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program, Feeding Our Future, and related organizations.
They also wrote that federal counterterrorism sources confirmed that millions of dollars from stolen funds were sent back to Somalia, where the money allegedly ended up supporting al-Shabaab.
