In a Thanksgiving message late Thursday night, President Trump attacked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, criticizing his intellectual capacity, and also attacked Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar as part of a lengthy denunciation of Minnesota’s large Somali community, which has recently come under scrutiny.

Early Friday, the White House pushed out over X the Truth Social posting where Mr. Trump made his remarks, calling them “one of the most important messages ever released by President Trump. Read every word.”

Mr. Trump claimed that Somali refugees are “completely taking over” the North Star State.

“Hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota. Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for “prey” as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone,” He wrote. “The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both.”

He then set his sights on the Somali-born Ms. Omar, a prominent and influential member of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s far left squad.

“The worst ‘Congressman/woman’ in our Country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country, its Constitution, and how ‘badly’ she is treated, when her place of origin is a decadent, backward, and crime ridden nation,” he wrote.

Mr. Trump also claimed that the real overall migrant population in America is much higher than the figure of 53 million people and that the “refugee burden” is the leading cause of America’s ills.

“Most of which are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels,” he said. “They and their children are supported through massive payments from Patriotic American Citizens who, because of their beautiful hearts, do not want to openly complain or cause trouble in any way, shape, or form.”

“This refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America, something that did not exist after World War II (Failed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits, etc.).”

The Somali community in Minnesota is not typical of the immigrant experience in America. Minnesota is home to approximately 80,000 Somalis, the largest such population in America, according to data from Minnesota Compass.

In the early 1990s, Minnesota’s dominant Lutheran Church welcomed tens of thousands of Somalis to the state, as an act of charity during a time when Somalia was in violent collapse. The community has continued to grow in Minnesota, and is controversial due in part to perceptions that it’s a closed, inward society uninterested in integrating with other Minnesotans, and for the orthodox form of Islam practiced by some Somalis. Crime, despite Mr. Trump’s commentary, is not considered an outsized problem among Somalis in Minnesota.

In November, a young Somali-American state senator, Omar Fateh, made a strong if ultimately unsuccessful campaign for Minneapolis mayor, a campaign which cause alarm in some anti-immigrant circles and public condemnation from Stephen Miller, one of Mr. Trump’s most senior advisors, who posted on X a video of Mr. Fateh campaigning in Somali and waving a Somali flag.

On Thursday, the president directed officials to review all green cards issued to individuals from Somalia and 18 additional nations. This announcement came just days after he declared his intention to end temporary protected status for Somali residents of Minnesota, alleging that “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great state.”

Later Thursday evening, Mr. Trump stated he would halt immigration from what he termed “all Third World Countries” to enable the U.S. immigration system to “fully recover.”

Over the weekend, Mr. Trump said in another post on Truth Social that he would terminate the Temporary Protected Status for all Somalis in Minnesota. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who will need to figure out how to legally carry out his order, said on Sunday that there was no timeline for ending the status protections.

Ms. Omar has said that while pulling TPS would be offensive, it would not affect very many Somalis now in Minnesota.

Community leaders from Somalia’s Minnesota population, along with Democratic legislators and advocacy organizations, have condemned the president’s remarks targeting their community. 

Conservative activist and senior fellow with The Manhattan Institute, Christopher Rufo, claimed responsibility for the new developments in a recent post on social media.

“Canceling TPS for Minnesota Somalis is a great start. Next: review all asylum, refugee, and citizenship applications for any hint of fraud or technical error; then initiate denaturalizations and mass deportations up to the furthest limits of the law. They have to go home,” he wrote on X.

Mr. Rufo recently co-wrote an article for the conservative publication City Journal which alleges that funds from large-scale fraudulent schemes in Minnesota were funneled to Al-Shabaab, a Somali terrorist organization operating in Mogadishu, totaling millions of dollars. “Our investigation shows what happens when a tribal mindset meets a bleeding-heart bureaucracy, when imported clan loyalties collide with a political class too timid to offend, and when accusations of racism are cynically deployed to shield criminal behavior,” reads a passage from the article.

“The predictable result is graft, with taxpayers left to foot the bill.”

While Al-Shabaab is officially classified as a terror group by the American State Department, it focuses its attention on the Somali civil war and is not believed to operate outside East Africa. Many Somali-American young men, however, have left Minnesota for Somalia to join the militia.