Minnesota’s Somali community has organized mutual aid and neighborhood patrols amid Trump’s campaign to crush them.
This article was originally published by Truthout.
Winter in Minnesota is notoriously harsh, lasting until mid-spring and marked by below-freezing temperatures, heavy snowfall, and intense winds. It is a common misconception that survival requires either hibernation or migration, but blue jays roost communally to conserve warmth through the cold nights, and white-tailed deer congregate in wintering yards, finding safety in numbers. Surviving in hostile climates, whether environmental or political, is impossible in isolation.
This is a lesson that Minnesota’s Somali community knows well. In recent months, they have been the target of a racist and relentless tirade of abuse from the highest offices of the United States. The Trump administration’s inflammatory rhetoric against Somali immigrants has been coupled with the rescinding of Temporary Protected Status for Somali nationals, funding freezes to social services that many in the community rely on, and what acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Todd Lyons has claimed is the largest immigration enforcement operation ever.
Rather than retreat and wait for the administration to find a new scapegoat, the community’s response has been to create an ecosystem of care that does more than proclaim to “love your neighbor” — members of the Somali community, alongside allies across community lines, are building the means necessary to protect and defend each other.
Cedar-Riverside, also known as the West Bank and occasionally referred to as Little Mogadishu, is a Minneapolis neighborhood that is home to the highest concentration of Somali people in the state. Burhan Israfael, a community organizer and Cedar resident, says the fear in the current moment is palpable.
“Surviving in hostile climates, whether environmental or political, is impossible in isolation.”
“It’s tough,” he told Truthout. “There’s no such thing as a normal life anymore, especially for people who are directly affected.”
Israfael says his once-bustling neighborhood is now a ghost town. “Uncles used to go to cafes to unwind, and that doesn’t happen anymore,” he told Truthout. “They’re taking their coffee to-go and staying home.”
This is not just anecdotal; businesses in the surrounding Somali enclaves, centers of both commerce and connection, are experiencing significant decreases in revenue.
Many in the community initially responded to Donald Trump’s insults with jokes, dismissing them as another example of the theatrical cruelty that has defined his presidency. But it quickly became clear that the federal government was set on attacking the community in earnest this time. As thousands of armed federal agents — including masked agents from both ICE and Customs and