President Donald Trump on Tuesday ripped Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., as “garbage” and said Somalis should “go back to where they came from” during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. His remarks come on the heels of several reports alleging widespread Medicaid fraud among the country’s largest Somali community in Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Minnesota congressional district.
“I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, OK. Somebody will say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason,” he said.
“Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country,” Trump said of the historically failed nation.
“With Somalia, which is barely a country, you know, they have no, they have no anything. They just run around killing each other. There’s no structure,” he said before turning to Omar, a left-wing Democrat who has repeatedly criticized the U.S.
As for Omar, she responded on social media along with a video of Trump’s remarks: “His obsession with me is creepy. I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
“I can say that about other countries, too,” he added, as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sat nearby. In a social media post Monday night, Noem said, “I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”
Later in the meeting, Trump referred to Omar as “garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people that work. These aren’t people that say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’ These are people that do nothing but complain.”
“You know, if they came from paradise, and they said, ‘This isn’t paradise,’ but when they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but b—-, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” he added.
Trump’s comments came as a senior law enforcement official told NBC News that Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to conduct an operation in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area this week. The official said ICE is not specifically targeting the Somali community but may arrest some Somali nationals who are found to be in violation of U.S. immigration laws.
