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The Trump administration is moving forward with plans to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somali migrants in Minnesota.

Getting into it: In a post late last week on his social media platform Truth Social, President Donald Trump announced that he was ending legal protections for Somali residents in Minnesota “effective immediately.” Trump claimed that “Minnesota, under [Gov. Tim] Waltz, is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity” and accused Somali gangs of “terrorizing the people of that great State.” He ended his post with the demand to “Send them back to where they came from. It’s OVER!”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, during a visit to Minneapolis, clarified that while Trump called for immediate action, DHS is still evaluating whether Somalia should remain on the TPS list. Noem stated that any formal change would follow the legal process, which includes a mandatory 60-day notice and publication in the Federal Register. She emphasized that TPS “was never meant to be an asylum program,” but rather a short-term measure following crises.

Gov. Tim Walz condemned the announcement as a broad and baseless attack on an entire community. “It’s not surprising that the President has chosen to broadly target an entire community,” he wrote on social media, calling it a political distraction. Community leaders echoed these sentiments, with Minneapolis City Council member Jamal Osman warning that Trump’s rhetoric is “dangerous, inaccurate, and deeply hurtful.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Minnesota described the move as a “political attack on the Somali and Muslim community driven by Islamophobic and hateful rhetoric.”

This comes as Minnesota is home to the largest Somali population in the United States, with almost 80,000 residents of Somali descent. However, only a small fraction (approximately 705 Somali nationals nationwide, and around 430 in Minnesota) currently hold TPS. Most Somalis in the state are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.