Everything seemed normal at Minneapolis’s Somali markets: Men sat in barber chairs, women browsed colorful garments at the boutiques and patrons sampled fried sambusas and rice dishes at the eateries, sometimes as the Muslim call to prayer was sung at low volume over the loudspeakers.

But beneath the calm surface, a quiet anxiety was palpable.

Pockets and purses hung a little heavier with immigration documents and passports as the specter of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown loomed over the gathering spots for the Somali diaspora in the Twin Cities – home to the nation’s largest population of people from the East African country.

A new Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation targeting undocumented Somali immigrants has begun in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, a source with knowledge of the plans told CNN Wednesday. The cities are the latest target of Trump’s sweeping deportation push that has seen a surge of federal agents flooding the streets of blue cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte and New Orleans.

With the President of the United States disparaging their community as “garbage,” many in Minneapolis’s Somali community were feeling unsettled – as evidenced by the sparser than normal crowds at two different malls and the occasional shuttered shop.

A young man working at a bakery at the Karmel Mall south of downtown Minneapolis said the shopping center on Tuesday night was dead compared to usual.

The man, who only gave his first name, Fawzi, said he is nervous even though he was born in Minneapolis.

“I feel scared,” he said. “Imagine you’re just sitting in your car and then just someone walks up and is like, ‘Yo, you gotta come with me.’”

At the sprawling indoor mall, offices offering visa and overseas shipping services are interspersed with henna shops, rows of boutiques selling traditional Somali attire, colorful prayer mats and gold jewelry. Overhead, a blue ceiling with white stars symbolizes the flag of Somalia.

At another market about 2 miles away, 24 Somali Mall, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey paid a visit to calm jangled nerves and show his support on Wednesday afternoon.

Frey was waiting in line to buy a Somali confection at a bakery when a woman went up to him and showed him her green card. She told him she was carrying it because she was scared.

“I mean, she’s an American citizen,” Frey later told CNN. “She’s been here for 25 years, in Minneapolis.”

Carrying ID cards and papers out of fear

As the mayor posed for photos and chatted with shoppers at 24 Somali Mall, a different scene played out just outside.

Three vehicles with tinted windows and Virginia plates pulled to a stop near a man who was panhandling on a snowy street. Multiple armed men in law enforcement vests marked “ERO,” or Enforcement and Removal Operations, came out, CNN witnessed.

They asked him for his identification before letting him go, the man later told CNN.

The man, who declined to give his name, said he is a 35-year-old US citizen who was born in Buffalo, New York.

He said he showed the agents his “papers,” and added he wouldn’t have had a problem with doing so had the agents not been so “aggressive.”

“They grabbed my hand,” he said. “You shouldn’t do that. … Other than that I got no problem being verified.”

Frey noted that of the more than 80,000 people of Somali descent in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, the vast majority are citizens or legal residents; just a few hundred have temporary protected status – a protection that President Donald Trump has threatened to remove.

“It’s a fairly small number, but again, they are here legally,” he said, adding he fears federal agents will violate the Constitution by “arresting American citizens for looking like they’re Somali.”

Others told CNN they, too, were carrying ID cards and papers for fear of getting stopped.

Kamal Ali, who runs a dump truck business with his father and brother, made sure to stick his passport in his wallet before heading to Karmel Mall to grab dinner.

“I don’t want no issues,” said the 39-year-old, who said he came to the US at age 10 with his parents after living in a refugee camp in Somalia.

The mayor on Wednesday signed an executive order to prohibit federal, state and local law-enforcement agents from using city-owned parking lots, ramps, garages or vacant lots for staging immigration enforcement operations.

The order was modeled on a similar policy in Chicago, where federal immigration authorities had previously used municipal lots to stage operations, Minneapolis city officials said in a statement.

Frey’s order will also create a “signage template” for local businesses and property owners who want to mark their property as off-limits for these activities, the statement said.

Trump’s comments ‘demean a whole community’

Abdul Abdullahi, who runs an employment office at 24 Somali Mall, said he finds Trump’s words about the Somali community “shameful.”

“It’s very unfortunate for someone in the highest office in the world to generalize and demean a whole community by saying that they are garbage – they’re of no good,” said Abdullahi, 39, who said he’s been living in Minneapolis for decades. “This is just an attempt to divide us – an attempt to pit us against each other.”

When asked about comments from President Donald Trump about not wanting Somali immigrants in the United States, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, speaking with CNN, cited data analysis on Somalis in Minneapolis and other parts of the country that suggests there is “widespread fraud, particularly marriage fraud, when it comes to immigration.”

Nearly 58% of Somalis in Minnesota were born in the US, according to the US Census Bureau. Of the foreign-born Somalis in Minnesota, an overwhelming majority — 87% — are naturalized US citizens.

Citizens of Somalia were first granted Temporary Protected Status in 1991 when the country was plunged into chaos after dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown. In 2013, the US officially recognized the Somali government in Mogadishu for the first time in two decades.

Somalis have maintained Temporary Protected Status “due to insecurity and ongoing armed conflict that present serious threats to the safety of returnees,” according to the legislation.

Mixed opinions within the community

Not all who spoke with CNN were critics of Trump. Some said they voted for him.

Among them was a 40-year-old patron at Karmel Mall who said he attended a Trump rally in Minneapolis in 2019 but was turned away as the venue was filled to capacity.

“The economy was really good the first term,” said the man, a mechanical engineer who only wanted to share his first name, Mohamud. “I’m a numbers guy.”

Still, Mohamud said he believes Trump’s rhetoric will boost the president’s standing at the expense of the local Somali community.

“This will give him a boost of support,” he said. “You know, people will rally behind him, you know … making America great, whatever that means, right?”

Nasir Abdi, a patron at 24 Somali Mall, echoed the sentiment.

“This is just a show,” he said.

Some Somali residents addressed a $300-million fraud scandal in Minnesota in which dozens of people – the vast majority of them of Somali descent – were charged.

Trump referenced the scandal, which diverted money meant to feed children during the pandemic to fraudsters, a week before Thanksgiving, calling Minnesota a “hub of fraudulent money laundering activity” as he announced plans to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Somali residents in the state.

“There’s a few bad apples, you know, that committed crimes and broke the law, but at the same time, you can’t do a collective punishment,” said Ali, the man who works at his family’s dump truck business.

Frey put a similar point in stronger terms.

“If you stole food from children and money that should have gone towards housing, you should go to jail,” he said, while eating a plate of goat meat and rice at 24 Somali Mall. “You do not hold an entire community accountable for the actions of the fraudsters.”

He added: “I’m Jewish, and nobody ever held me accountable for Bernie Madoff’s financial crimes.” (CNN)

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