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Gov. Tim Walz on Thursday sharply criticized President Donald Trump’s recent disparaging statements about Somali immigrants, calling the remarks “vile, racist lies and slander towards our fellow Minnesotans.”
Trump this week referred to Somali immigrants as “garbage,” and said “they’ve destroyed our country.” The comments came amid a federal immigration operation targeting Minnesota’s Somali community.
In a press release Thursday, an ICE spokesperson disclosed the names of a dozen men apprehended by agents. Five of the men are from Somalia.
Tens of thousands of Somali Americans call Minnesota home.
Speaking Thursday at an event on the latest state budget forecast, Walz started by addressing Trump’s comments. He lamented that “we’ve got little children going to school today, who their president called them garbage.”
Walz also said it’s not right to disparage an entire racial or ethnic group if some members commit crimes. Trump has broadly criticized Somalis over the Feeding our Future fraud case, which involved dozens of Somali Minnesotans.
“If you commit crimes, you go to jail. Doesn’t matter what your race is, what your ethnicity, religion — but demonizing an entire group of people by their race and their ethnicity, a very group of people who contribute to the vitality — economic, cultural — of this state, is something I was hoping we’d never have to see,” Walz said.
Walz called on other elected officials in Minnesota to also condemn what Trump said.
Republican lawmakers, who appeared at the budget event after Walz, gingerly fielded questions about Trump’s remarks.
Asked directly if she agreed with the president, GOP House Speaker Lisa Demuth avoided condemning them and focused her remarks mostly on fraud cases.
“What we need to do is hold the fraudsters in any community accountable for their actions and stop it here in the state of Minnesota,” she said.
Twice she was asked if the Trump comments were appropriate.
"We have a wonderful state with people that are actively a part of making Minnesota even better than what we know,” said Demuth, a Republican candidate for governor. “What I will say, though, is there is not an entire community that is bad and there's not an entire community that is good.”
State Senator Eric Pratt, a Republican seeking a suburban congressional seat, went further in distancing himself from the Trump remarks. Pratt, who is running for the open 2nd Congressional District seat, said he shares Trump's frustration about cases of social service fraud involving Somali defendants. But Pratt said he disagreed with the president's language.
“It wasn't said the way that I would have said it,” Pratt said, adding, “We should never be condemning a community in its entirety.”
Pratt also responded to Trump calling Minnesota a “hellhole.”
“It's not a hellhole, but we we are in the news for all the wrong reasons,” he said.
Community leaders in the Twin Cities continued to raise concerns about the federal immigration operation, and show support for the local Somali community on Thursday. There was a midday prayer service at a community center in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis.
Clergy leaders from across different faiths also gathered Thursday afternoon in south Minneapolis to denounce Trump’s recent rhetoric.
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