By now you have seen the reports about alleged widespread welfare and social services fraud in Minnesota. And by now, you have seen the right fixate on the state’s Somali community.
The most prominent example of fraud took place via a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future, which bilked taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of federal COVID dollars as it falsely claimed to distribute meals.
The founder of the organization, a white American named Aimee Bock, was convicted of her crimes. Dozens of others involved in the scheme have pled guilty. Most of those involved were of Somali background.
If there’s blame to go around, it seems first aimed at the individual wrongdoers themselves. And then, as a systemic critique, the reckless throwing around of public funds.
But, what do you know, MAGA world has chosen to make this not about the need to hold individuals liable for their actions or the need to better manage taxpayer funds. Instead, they made it about Somalis for being Somali.
“We should not be shocked, when you import a population whose primary occupation is pirate, that they are going to come here and steal everything we have,” declared White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor Stephen Miller on Fox News.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, went on a tirade suggesting Somalis should “go back to where they came from,” that “their country is no good for a reason” and that the U.S. would “go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”
A reasonable response would include some pretty straightforward statements like: Fraud is bad. People who commit fraud should go to prison. Welfare and social services spending should be handled more responsibly. People who commit crimes are not representative of everyone of similar general characteristics like ethnicity.
Stuff like that.
Instead, we get what Miller and Trump wanted and promoted, which is a now months-long condemnation of Somalis for being Somalis because some Somalis engaged in fraud.
It feeds into a cartoonishly simplified narrative that “they” are the ones who are ripping off hardworking American taxpayers and if only we punish and run “them” out then “we the real Americans” will have our country “back” or whatever.
It’s the same thing Haitians went through ahead of the 2024 presidential election. You remember, when Trump and other Republicans were seriously trying to have people believe Haitians were stealing and eating pets in the Midwest. It wasn’t true and was entirely the figment of the right’s imagination.
Indeed, the real story was that Haitian migrants were helping to reinvigorate the deindustrialized city of Springfield, Ohio. Naturally, some local residents didn’t like the influx of people and racial tensions festered for years until Trump decided he needed to take a crazy smear of Haitians nationwide.
With all of this, is it any wonder that a recent survey of Republicans by the conservative (yes, conservative) Manhattan Institute found that 32% of young Republicans “say they openly express racist views”? Of course not.
Nor is it surprising that on New Year’s Eve, the Department of Homeland Security’s official X account posted a picture of a beach along with the text “America after 100 million deportations” and “The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.”
Not that facts ever really seem to matter to MAGA, but no, there aren’t 100 million deportable people in America. According to Pew Research Center, there were 52 million foreign-born people in the country in 2023. About half (46%) were citizens, about 12 million were legal permanent residents and the rest (14 million) were in the country variously as longtime illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, people with Temporary Protected Status and so on.
And no, I don’t actually think America will see deportations anywhere near that scale, though it’s obvious that’s the sort of thing vast segments of the MAGA right fantasize about.
The MAGA movement is basically a fever dream for racists and xenophobes in which they can leverage the force of the United States federal government and right-wing media echo chambers to punish and demonize disfavored groups.
Rather than having core principles or coherent critiques, the MAGA movement has vaguely-formed grievances and simplistic “solutions” that generally involve scapegoating groups of people for the ills of the nation. That’s the movement Trump has built.
If one seriously believes Somalis, Haitians or immigrants in general are the great problem in America, they’ve allowed themselves to be misled by demagogues.
Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com