Trump Sends 2,000 More ICE Agents In Minnesota 'Crackdown'

Anab (cq) Abdirhman(cq) looks for farbic at a shop in mini-mall that caters to Somali shoppers in south Minneapolis. The mall opened 3-months ago, and offers clothing boutiques, perfumeries, a barber shop, tailor shop, and other stores that sell Somali go — Source: Star Tribune via Getty Images / Getty

The Trump administration never misses a beat when it comes to turning its seething xenophobia and white nationalist bigotry into policy and action, and it will exploit any current event it can to justify doing so. So, it should surprise absolutely no one that the fraud scandal in Minnesota has given President Donald Trump and his racist regime all the justification it needs to send approximately 2,000 federal agents, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, into the Twin Cities area.

From CBS News:

The crackdown could involve roughly 2,000 agents and officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation branch and Homeland Security Investigations, the agency’s investigative arm tasked with fighting transnational crimes, the officials said. They requested anonymity to discuss operations that have not been publicly announced.

The plan is for the agents and officers to oversee a 30-day surge in operations in the Twin Cities area, making the region the first major target of the Trump administration’s expanded immigration crackdown in the new year, officials said. Agents deployed from Homeland Security Investigations are expected to probe alleged cases of fraud, building on last month’s inspection of dozens of sites in the Minneapolis area.

As many of you know by now, right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley brought national MAGA attention to the fraud scandal that has been investigated since 2021 by recording himself harassing workers at Somali-servicing day care centers, taking a propagandist’s approach to journalism in a dubious effort to prove that these centers are receiving public funds, but are not actually providing any service. Did his videos include anything even remotely based on fact? No, but that didn’t stop top officials like Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi from using them as an opportunity to push the fraud story into the national spotlight. President Donald Trump also used the opportunity to continue pushing his anti-Somali agenda, calling Minnesota a “hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.”

Granted, the fraud scandal had been plaguing Minnesota long before Shirley’s videos began going viral. CBS noted that, in 2021, “federal law enforcement first probed a series of multimillion-dollar fraud schemes,” and that “those fraud schemes have led to federal charges against 92 people with 62 convicted — and counting.” The majority of those convicted have been of Somali descent, which a racist might believe vindicates Trump’s overall hatred for Somalis in the U.S., so long as you forget that there are more than 80,0000 Somalis living in Minnesota currently, and that all but a few dozen of those people are uninvolved in the fraud cases.

Some of you might be wondering what any of this has to do with ICE, as these are fraud cases, not cases involving undocumented migrants. But that’s a question that assumes facts and logic take precedence over xenophobic hatred under the Trump administration, which is just silly. The Somali community in Minnesota had already been complaining about being targeted by ICE agents indiscriminately as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. It’s unsurprising that this five-year-old scandal that has just recently become national news was all the Trump administration needed as an excuse to ramp things up, and it’s even less surprising that it has placed U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino — whose exploits in Chicago, Charlotte and New Orleans have already drawn strong rebukes from city officials, federal judges and community members — is being sent to help lead immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota.

For months, Trump has been going on and on about how he doesn’t want Somalis in the U.S., whether they’re here legally or not. Then the perfect scandal comes along, giving him all the justification he needs to do more of what he was already doing in Minnesota: targeting Somali immigrants indiscriminately.

It’s not about fraud; it’s about ridding the country of as many Black and brown people as possible.

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