Everything seemed normal at Minneapolis’s Somali markets: Men sat in barber chairs, women browsed colorful garments at the boutiques and patrons sampled fried sambusas and rice dishes at the eateries, sometimes as the Muslim call to prayer was sung at low volume over the loudspeakers.
But beneath the calm surface, a quiet anxiety was palpable.
Pockets and purses hung a little heavier with immigration documents and passports as the specter of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown loomed over the gathering spots for the Somali diaspora in the Twin Cities – home to the nation’s largest population of people from the East African country.
A new Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation targeting undocumented Somali immigrants has begun in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, a source with knowledge of the plans told CNN Wednesday. The cities are the latest target of Trump’s sweeping deportation push that has seen a surge of federal agents flooding the streets of blue cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte and New Orleans.
With the President of the United States disparaging their community as “garbage,” many in Minneapolis’s Somali community were feeling unsettled – as evidenced by the sparser than normal crowds at two different malls and the occasional shuttered shop.
