Trump’s Racist Attack on Somali People

Jan 19, 2026

The Trump administration announced that it is ending the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somali immigrants as of March 17, 2026. TPS is granted to immigrants whose deportation would put them in danger because of the conditions in their country. There are only about 3,800 Somali people in the U.S. on TPS or applying for it, less than two percent of Somalis living in the U.S. Trump’s attack on them is significant because it is part of the Trump administration’s wider attack on Somalis—and immigrants in general.

It is an openly vile, racist attack. In early December, Trump called Somali immigrants in the U.S. “garbage” and threatened to send them “back where they came from.” Trump and his administration are also trying to portray Somalis as criminals—as it has been identified that a few dozen Somalis were involved in a federal childcare fraud case in Minnesota.

The majority of the 260,000 Somali people living in the U.S. came to the U.S. in the 1990s, when they were fleeing violence in their country—and that violence was largely driven by the intervention of foreign powers, above all the U.S. Somalia emerged as an independent country in the Horn of Africa, in 1960, in areas formerly colonized by Britain and Italy. This was the time period of the military rivalry between the U.S. and USSR known as the Cold War, when smaller countries armed by the two big powers fought regional wars. One of these proxy wars was that between Somalia and its neighbor, Ethiopia, in 1977. The defeat of Somalia in that war set the stage for the country’s descent into chaos and the eventual collapse of the Somali state in the early 1990s. The fight for control among various militias spelled disaster for the population, leading to mass displacement, famine, and a big wave of migration abroad, including into the U.S.

The Cold War ended with the collapse of the USSR in 1991, but U.S. intervention in the region continued. The Horn of Africa, near the oil-rich regions of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, as well as the trade routes of the Red Sea, was too important for U.S. imperialism to abandon. The U.S. was involved in the Somali civil war in the 1990s, including a direct military invasion (depicted in the movie Black Hawk Down), which greatly contributed to the violence and instability.

During the U.S. government’s professed “war on terror” in the 2000s, the U.S. sent massive amounts of money to militia leaders based in Mogadishu, the capital of now-defunct Somalia, under the pretext of fighting Islamist militants. This, however, did not save the brutal militias from being ousted by a popular uprising in 2006. The U.S. countered, by backing up the invasion of Mogadishu by neighboring Ethiopia the following year. All this led to another wave of mass migration out of Somalia.

The U.S. military and CIA continue their intervention in the region to this day, mainly in the form of drone attacks—with their constant toll of civilian deaths. So, Trump’s ridiculous claim that Somali immigrants have “destroyed our country” is so hypocritical—considering how the U.S.’s decades-long imperialist policy toward Somalia is responsible for the destruction of Somalia and uprooting of its people!

Trump’s open, racist attack on Somali people, along with other non-white immigrants, is aimed at dividing the U.S. working class. For American workers, falling into this trap can only mean a further weakening of the whole U.S. working class and a green light for U.S. imperialism in its march to more, bigger wars around the globe—for which American workers have always paid dearly.