Trump Targets Somalis: Because Targeting Brown People Is Always a PR Win
President Trump, never one to let a brown face go un-scapegoated, has directed ICE to target Minneapolis's Somali community. Secretary Kristi Noem, parroting Trump's rhetoric, claims 50% of their visa programs are 'fraudulent,' a figure plucked from the ether, considering the official Operation Twin Shield – an actual, government-led investigation – reviewed 1,000 cases and found suspected fraud
in 275. That’s 27.5% suspected fraud, not the '50%' Noem pulls from, presumably, a hat of xenophobic imaginings. The 'why it matters' here isn't the phantom fraud, but the consistent, dehumanizing targeting of a specific ethnic group for political gain. This isn’t about visa integrity; it's about weaponizing government agencies to harass immigrant communities, a tactic as old as the 'gang' trope
itself. The 'wacko Governor' Tim Walz rightly calls it a 'PR stunt.' Yet, while Trump rails against Somalis and 'billions missing'— without citing a single traceable source for these billions—one might wonder why similar scrutiny isn’t applied to, say, the billions in foreign aid that vanish into thin air or the staggering sums funneled through lobbying groups like AIPAC, whose influence on policy
is transparently transactional. But then again, those billions don't come with the easy political points of demonizing an immigrant community.