Homan Defends Operations Against Illegal Somalis in Minnesota

Homan dismissed accusations that agents from ICE stop people just because they look Somali.

White House border czar Tom Homan speaks to reporters near the White House in Washington, on July 30, 2025. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown on Somalis in Minnesota is targeted at illegal immigrants and felons, White House border czar Tom Homan said in a Dec. 7 interview with CNN, dismissing concerns of unjust targeting.

“There’s a large illegal Somali community there. ... If you’re a U.S. citizen, you will have nothing to fear. We’re looking for criminal aliens. And, also, if you’re a resident alien, you have a felony conviction, by statute, you could be set up for deportation,” he said.

“So, we’re looking for public safety threats, national security threats, and illegal aliens.”

Homan said authorities don’t know how many illegal Somalis there are in Minnesota, citing the more than 2 million gotaways who entered the United States under the Biden administration.

Gotaways are illegal immigrants who successfully evade Border Patrol and law enforcement after crossing the border and end up residing all across the United States. These people were detected by authorities but could not be vetted, Homan said.

President Donald Trump is fixing the previous four years of open border policies, he said, and authorities are going to focus on illegal alien public safety threats in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Twin Cities region.

“And if they weren’t a sanctuary city, I mean, many of these people would be apprehended in the safety and security of the county jail,“ Homan said. ”But because they’re a sanctuary city, we have got to send more resources there to flood the zone, because it takes a whole team to find somebody in the community, where it would take one agent [to arrest] one bad guy in a county jail.”

Sanctuary jurisdictions are places where local or state officials refuse to enforce federal immigration laws or cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Minnesota is one of the states that follow such sanctuary policies, according to an Aug. 5 statement from the Department of Justice.

Homan dismissed accusations that agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stop people just because they look Somali.

ICE agents undergo Fourth Amendment training every six months, he said, and Border Patrol also undergoes such training. The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by government authorities.

“Their appearance alone can’t raise reasonable suspicion,” the border czar said.

Homan was asked about Trump’s allegedly referring to Somali migrants in the United States as “garbage.”

The president’s statement triggered opposition from Democrats.

“It is disgusting that Trump’s hateful words of calling Somali Americans ‘garbage’ have continued to go unchecked by members of the Republican Party,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who was born in Somalia, said in a Dec. 7 post on X.

Responding to the controversy, Homan said Trump was “referring to public safety threats and national security threats from Somalia and every other country.”

“I mean, he’s been clear from day one,” he said.

When asked whether Trump’s statement covered the entire Somali community, Homan said he was “not aware what President Trump was thinking when he said that.”

Some of the countries from which illegal immigrants are flowing into America “don’t have the databases” the United States has, Homan said, and they don’t “even do the proper checks before they issue a passport to their citizens.”

When asked about “aggressive tactics” employed by ICE, Homan said there was a significant uptick in violence against law enforcement officials.

“Threats on ICE officers are up 1200 percent. They’re being doxxed on social media. They’re getting death threats every day. They have been attacked. They have been shot at,” Homan said.

“And these officers are out there looking for the worst of the worst. So they’re protecting themselves. And I think they’re following the law. And if any ICE officer or Border Patrol agent acts out of policy or does something inappropriate, they will be held accountable.

“But we got to remember, I mean, they’re under attack. And we’re at a place in this country where, all of a sudden, the ones who enforce the law are the bad guys and the ones who wrote the laws are victims.”

ICE Enforcement

There are nearly 80,000 Somalis living in Minnesota, according to data from Minnesota Compass, a social indicators project. The Twin Cities region accounted for about 78 percent of Somali immigrants in the state.

On Nov. 21, Trump announced he was rescinding the temporary protected status for Somali immigrants living in Minnesota.

“Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social, while suggesting that Minnesota was a “hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz criticized ongoing ICE operations in the Twin Cities.

“We welcome support in investigating and prosecuting crime. But pulling a PR stunt and indiscriminately targeting immigrants is not a real solution to a problem,” he said in a Dec. 2 post on X.

On Dec. 4, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said a string of arrests had been made as part of Operation Metro Surge, an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis, detaining individuals considered the “worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.”

Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin accused local officials of instituting sanctuary policies, allowing “pedophiles, domestic terrorists, and gang members to roam the streets and terrorize Americans.”

Many of the individuals arrested as part of the immigration crackdown are Somali nationals.