<\/p>\n
The Trump administration<\/span> is waging a multi-pronged war on Somali people, painting them as criminals, murderers, and terrorists and using multiple federal agencies to target them at home and abroad. The campaign includes military attacks in Somalia, as well as arrests, deportations, and the weaponization of federal law enforcement agencies against immigrants and the Somali American community in the United States, including the recent use of Homeland Security agents as a goon squad to target Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar.<\/p>\n In his second term, President Donald Trump has routinely cast Somalia as lawless<\/a> and Somalis as violent<\/a>. Meanwhile, his administration has, largely without public knowledge, killed hundreds of people in Somalia, claiming they belong to terror groups. Trump personally ordered the death<\/a> of a Somali man within days of regaining the White House, according to his counterterrorism<\/a> czar Sebastian Gorka. The administration claimed, without offering any evidence, that the man was connected with the Islamic State terror group. Trump has sought to do the same<\/a> with Omar.<\/p>\n Homeland Security agents raided Omar\u2019s Washington, D.C., home last Monday, three weeks before the midterms<\/a>, in which she is seeking reelection. The Trump administration reportedly launched the investigation to build a case to strip Omar of her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her. (Omar fled war in Somalia with her family when she was 8 years old, later immigrated to the U.S. as a refugee<\/a>, and became a citizen in 2000.)\u00a0The administration has also issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to some of Omar\u2019s relatives. On Monday, conservative media outlets reported that federal prosecutors obtained Omar\u2019s DNA as part of their investigation.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what happens in a dictatorship. The leader identifies his political, ethnic and religious enemies, and his agents scramble to do his bidding and make him happy,\u201d Zaynab Mohamed, a Somali immigrant who represents Minneapolis in Minnesota\u2019s state Senate, told The Intercept. \u201cRepresentative Omar is the latest subject where Trump identifies the target and his minions go looking for a crime. The cases always fall apart, and this one will, too.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump claimed not to have ordered the raid, but throughout his second term, his\u00a0Justice Department<\/a> has repeatedly targeted his political enemies \u2014 from New York\u2019s attorney general<\/a>, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve. \u201cI think she\u2019s a terrible person, but that\u2019s really up to the DOJ,\u201d Trump said<\/a> to reporters. \u201cI have nothing to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Omar called it<\/a> \u201can attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.\u201d She added: \u201cFor ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation.\u201d Omar\u2019s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Intercept.<\/p>\n With the Somali community<\/a>, Trump found a target that he could attack with Islamophobic, racist, and xenophobic rhetoric<\/a>, without incurring much mainstream backlash, said Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.<\/p>\n \u201cAs immigrants, Muslims, and \u2014 most importantly \u2014 Black people, it\u2019s the trifecta,\u201d he told The Intercept. \u201cNone of us expected the scale and level of the vitriol. But despite this, it\u2019s at the point that the traditional media almost ignore the attacks on the Somali-American community because it\u2019s not a large constituency. Trump says these things, and people just move on.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Over the last decade, Trump has overseen the killing of as many as 1,500 Somalis in more than 400 attacks, according to a count by New America, a D.C.-based think tank. During his second term alone, the Trump administration has conducted more than 200 airstrikes in Somalia, including close to 90 this year, claiming to target terrorists.<\/p>\n The U.S. military has been at war in Somalia for almost a quarter-century, conducting air attacks and commando raids<\/a> aimed at the terrorist group al-Shabab as well as the Islamic State group, while the\u00a0CIA and special operators<\/a>\u00a0created local proxy forces to conduct low-profile operations on behalf of America. At the same time, the U.S. has provided Somalia with billions of dollars<\/a> in counterterrorism assistance.<\/p>\n U.S. attacks in Somalia have skyrocketed during Trump\u2019s terms in office. From 2007 to 2017, under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. military carried out 59 declared airstrikes in Somalia. The Biden administration conducted 51 declared strikes over four years. During Trump\u2019s six years in office, the U.S. has launched more than 400 attacks against purported militants.<\/p>\n The U.S. rarely offers any evidence that those killed are members of terrorist groups, much less leaders. A New America analysis<\/a> found militant leaders comprised just 1.7 percent of those killed. Africa Command refused to provide requested evidence that any of those killed in airstrikes in Somalia this year were militants. \u201cAll U.S. strikes in Somalia are conducted in close coordination partners [sic] against designated terror groups,\u201d an AFRICOM spokesperson told The Intercept by email.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump has conducted more drone strikes in Somalia than Bush, Obama, and Biden combined. And so many civilians have died,\u201d historian Elizabeth Schmidt, the author of \u201cForeign Intervention in Africa After the Cold War: Sovereignty, Responsibility, and the War on Terror,\u201d told The Intercept. \u201cThey were often just young men living in an area where it was easy to label them jihadis. And it turns out they had nothing to do with terrorism.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The U.S. claims that it has only killed six civilians over almost two decades of war in Somalia. A count by the airstrike monitoring group Airwars put the number at as much as 2,600 percent higher<\/a>. A 2023 investigation by The Intercept determined, for example, that a drone attack in Somalia during Trump\u2019s first term killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including\u00a022-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter<\/a> Mariam Shilow Muse. At the time of the attack, the U.S. announced it had killed\u00a0\u201cfive terrorists<\/a>\u201d\u00a0<\/a>and that \u201cno civilians were killed in this airstrike.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump calls Somalia a \u201cthird-world\u201d or \u201cfourth-world nation<\/a>,\u201d says that it \u201cstinks<\/a>,\u201d and disparaged Somalis who come to the U.S., saying<\/a> \u201cwe\u2019re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.\u201d <\/p>\n His most xenophobic consigliere also claims Somalia is responsible for violence that has caused people to flee the country. \u201cThe entire Somali refugee program is predicated on a lie,\u201d wrote<\/a> Trump\u2019s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, late last year. \u201cDestroying your own country does not give you the right to become a citizen in ours.\u201d But this faux history disregards America\u2019s decadeslong role in fomenting violence in Somalia and destabilizing the country.<\/p>\n \u201cThe presence of Somalis in the U.S. has a lot to do with U.S. wars in Somalia.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n A casualty of the Cold War geopolitics that led to widespread conflict, political repression, and millions of deaths across the developing world, Somalia has experienced persistent political instability and strife since the late 1960s. In recent decades, the country has suffered civil war, famine, droughts, a longtime al-Shabab insurgency, and persistent humanitarian crises. <\/p>\n Over the last quarter century, the U.S. has intensified conflict in Somalia through direct attacks; training, funding, and running proxy forces; and funneling in weapons and other military assistance to one side of a civil war. As early as 2007, the Pentagon was aware that there were\u00a0fundamental flaws<\/a>\u00a0with U.S. military operations in the Horn of Africa, and Somalia devolved into another forever war stalemate. This has continued, despite the record number of airstrikes in Somalia under Trump.<\/p>\n Before Trump took office, in 2016, Islamist militants in Somalia killed 4,281 people<\/a>, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. By August, this year\u2019s total hit 6,731 deaths, a 57 percent increase. An analysis<\/a> by the Costs of War project at Brown University found that instead of eliminating militant groups, the U.S. counterterrorism campaign in Somalia was \u201censuring that the conflict continues in perpetuity.\u201d An AFRICOM spokesperson said the command\u2019s \u201coperational focus remains on working with partners to degrade terrorist organizations to create the space required for Somali-led governance and stability.\u201d But Trump claims Somalia has no government<\/a>, no military<\/a>, and is \u201cnot even a country<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c They weren\u2019t coming because they wanted a better job. It\u2019s because they feared for their lives and their children\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n The Intercept interviewed people displaced by the forever war in a camp on the outskirts of Somalia\u2019s capital, Mogadishu, in 2023. \u201cWe had to leave because of the drought and the conflict,\u201d\u00a0a mother of seven told<\/a> this reporter. She was one of more than a dozen women from the Lower Shabelle region of southwest Somalia who spoke to The Intercept after fleeing the front lines of an offensive<\/a> by the U.S.-backed Somali government against al-Shabab. Since Trump first took office, the number of Somalis forced from their homes has almost doubled from 2.4 million to 4.4 million.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think most Americans realize that the presence of Somalis in the U.S. has a lot to do with U.S. wars in Somalia. U.S. military intervention made a bad situation worse. This led to a surge of refugees and asylum-seekers to the U.S.,\u201d said Schmidt. \u201cThey weren\u2019t coming because they wanted a better job. It\u2019s because they feared for their lives and their children\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n During Trump\u2019s first term, his administration acknowledged \u201cthe ongoing armed conflict<\/a>\u201d as a reason to extend temporary protected status \u2014 which grants legal status, work authorization, and protection from deportation \u2014 to Somalis in the U.S., noting the security situation was \u201cfragile and volatile, with ongoing armed conflict among government forces, clan militias, African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) troops, and al-Shabaab.\u201d<\/p>\nTrump\u2019s War on Somalia<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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