ST. PAUL, Minn, (AP) \u2014 Democratic Gov. Tim Walz denounced President Donald Trump on Thursday for calling Minnesota\u2019s Somali community \u201cgarbage\u201d and dismissing the state as a \u201chellhole.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walz said Trump slandered all Minnesotans and that his expressions of contempt<\/a> for the state\u2019s Somali community \u2014 the largest in the U.S.<\/a> \u2014 were \u201cunprecedented for a United States president. We\u2019ve got little children going to school today who their president called them garbage.\u201d<\/p>\n Republican legislative leaders stopped short of accepting the governor\u2019s invitation to join him in condemnation, and countered that the dispute wouldn\u2019t have erupted if Walz had acted more effectively to prevent fraud in social service programs.<\/p>\n What Trump has said about Somali people<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s rhetoric against Somalis in the state has intensified since a conservative news outlet, City Journal, claimed last month that taxpayer dollars from defrauded government programs have flowed to the Somali militant group al-Shabab, an affiliate of al-Qaida.<\/p>\n On Thanksgiving, Trump called Minnesota \u201ca hub of fraudulent money laundering activity\u201d and said he was terminating Temporary Protected Status<\/a> for Somalis in Minnesota, a legal safeguard against deportation for immigrants from certain countries.<\/p>\n The president went further Tuesday, saying at a Cabinet meeting that he did not want immigrants<\/a> from the war-torn East African country<\/a> to stay in the U.S. \u201cWe can go one way or the other, and we\u2019re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n And Trump kept it up Wednesday, saying Minnesota had become a \u201chellhole\u201d because of them. \u201cSomalians should be out of here,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cThey\u2019ve destroyed our country.\u201d<\/p>\n Immigration enforcement in Minnesota<\/p>\n Federal authorities have prepared an immigration enforcement<\/a> operation in Minnesota this week that a person familiar with the planning<\/a> said would focus on Somalis living unlawfully in the U.S. <\/p>\n A congressional report put the number of Somalis with protected status<\/a> at around 700 nationwide. Within that, Walz estimated the number of Minnesota Somalis to be around 300.<\/p>\n Walz and community leaders said they didn\u2019t have figures on how many people might have been detained in recent days. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement press office did not reply to requests for details Wednesday or Thursday.<\/p>\n The Minneapolis-St. Paul area is home to about 84,000 people of Somali descent, who make up nearly one-third of the Somalis living in the U.S. Almost 58% of the Somalis in Minnesota were born in the U.S., and 87% of the foreign-born Somalis in Minnesota are naturalized U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n Uncertainty around fraud in government programs<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear how much loss there\u2019s been due to fraud schemes against government programs in Minnesota. Many but not all of the defendants in those cases are Somali Americans, and most are U.S. citizens. <\/p>\n Federal prosecutor Joe Thompson \u2014 who led the investigation into the $300 million Feeding Our Future scandal, which has led to charges against 78 people \u2014 estimated in an interview with KSTP-TV<\/a> this summer that the total across several programs could reach $1 billion. <\/p>\n Walz said an audit due for completion by late January should give a better picture, but allowed that the $1 billion figure \u201ccertainly could be\u201d accurate. He said his administration is taking aggressive action to prevent additional fraud.<\/p>\n Republicans are treading lightly<\/p>\n \u201cDemonizing an entire group of people by their race and their ethnicity, a very group of people who contribute to the vitality \u2014 economic, cultural \u2014 of this state is something I was hoping we\u2019d never have to see. This is on top of all the other vile comments,\u201d Walz told reporters during a briefing on the state\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n Republican Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who is running for governor<\/a> and has said she hopes to win Trump\u2019s endorsement, hedged when asked if she would condemn the president\u2019s remarks, too.<\/p>\n \u201cIn no way do I believe any community is all bad. Just like I don\u2019t believe any community is all good,\u201d Demuth said. \u201cWhat we need to do is call the fraudsters in any community accountable for their actions and stop it here in the state of Minnesota.\u201d<\/p>\n