Trump’s Obsession With Somalia Isn’t Just Racist. It’s Been Lethal.
Beyond targeting Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Trump administration has killed, arrested, deported, and demonized Somalis at home and abroad.
Nick Turse
October 21 2026, 6:00 a.m. ET
Share
Copy link
Share on Facebook
Share on Bluesky
Share on X
Share on LinkedIn
Share on WhatsApp
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., in her office on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 10, 2025. Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The Trump administration is waging a multi-pronged war on Somali people, painting them as criminals, murderers, and terrorists and using multiple federal agencies to target them at home and abroad. The campaign includes military attacks in Somalia, as well as arrests, deportations, and the weaponization of federal law enforcement agencies against immigrants and the Somali American community in the United States, including the recent use of Homeland Security agents as a goon squad to target Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
In his second term, President Donald Trump has routinely cast Somalia as lawless and Somalis as violent . Meanwhile, his administration has, largely without public knowledge, killed hundreds of people in Somalia, claiming they belong to terror groups. Trump personally ordered the death of a Somali man within days of regaining the White House, according to his counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka. The administration claimed, without offering any evidence, that the man was connected with the Islamic State terror group. Trump has sought to do the same with Omar.
Homeland Security agents raided Omar’s Washington, D.C., home last Monday, three weeks before the midterms , in which she is seeking reelection. The Trump administration reportedly launched the investigation to build a case to strip Omar of her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her. (Omar fled war in Somalia with her family when she was 8 years old, later immigrated to the U.S. as a refugee , and became a citizen in 2000.) The administration has also issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to some of Omar’s relatives. On Monday, conservative media outlets reported that federal prosecutors obtained Omar’s DNA as part of their investigation.
“This is what happens in a dictatorship. The leader identifies his political, ethnic and religious enemies, and his agents scramble to do his bidding and make him happy,” Zaynab Mohamed, a Somali immigrant who represents Minneapolis in Minnesota’s state Senate, told The Intercept. “Representative Omar is the latest subject where Trump identifies the target and his minions go looking for a crime. The cases always fall apart, and this one will, too.”
Related DHS Was Designed as a Weapon
Trump claimed not to have ordered the raid, but throughout his second term, his Justice Department has repeatedly targeted his political enemies — from New York’s attorney general , to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve. “I think she’s a terrible person, but that’s really up to the DOJ,” Trump said to reporters. “I have nothing to do with it.”
Omar called it “an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.” She added: “For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation.” Omar’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Intercept.
With the Somali community , Trump found a target that he could attack with Islamophobic, racist, and xenophobic rhetoric , without incurring much mainstream backlash, said Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“As immigrants, Muslims, and — most importantly — Black people, it’s the trifecta,” he told The Intercept. “None of us expected the scale and level of the vitriol. But despite this, it’s at the point that the traditional media almost ignore the attacks on the Somali-American community because it’s not a large constituency. Trump says these things, and people just move on.”
Most Read
Inside ICE, Officials Question String of Trump Admin “Midterm Panic Moves” Karl Loftus
The Army Wants to Sic AI Agents on Its Enemies. What Could Go Wrong? Sam Biddle
Mike Rogers Spent $100K on Private Jets and Luxury Travel Last Quarter Jonah Valdez
Trump’s War on Somalia Over the last decade, Trump has overseen the killing of as many as 1,500 Somalis in more than 400 attacks, according to a count by New America, a D.C.-based think tank. During his second term alone, the Trump administration has conducted more than 200 airstrikes in Somalia, including close to 90 this year, claiming to target terrorists.
The U.S. military has been at war in Somalia for almost a quarter-century, conducting air attacks and commando raids aimed at the terrorist group al-Shabab as well as the Islamic State group, while the CIA and special operators created local proxy forces to conduct low-profile operations on behalf of America. At the same time, the U.S. has provided Somalia with billions of dollars in counterterrorism assistance.
Related U.S. Conducts “Largest Airstrike in the History of the World” (Sort Of)
U.S. attacks in Somalia have skyrocketed during Trump’s terms in office. From 2007 to 2017, under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. military carried out 59 declared airstrikes in Somalia. The Biden administration conducted 51 declared strikes over four years. During Trump’s six years in office, the U.S. has launched more than 400 attacks against purported militants.
The U.S. rarely offers any evidence that those killed are members of terrorist groups, much less leaders. A New America analysis found militant leaders comprised just 1.7 percent of those killed. Africa Command refused to provide requested evidence that any of those killed in airstrikes in Somalia this year were militants. “All U.S. strikes in Somalia are conducted in close coordination partners [sic] against designated terror groups,” an AFRICOM spokesperson told The Intercept by email.
“Trump has conducted more drone strikes in Somalia than Bush, Obama, and Biden combined. And so many civilians have died,” historian Elizabeth Schmidt, the author of “Foreign Intervention in Africa After the Cold War: Sovereignty, Responsibility, and the War on Terror,” told The Intercept. “They were often just young men living in an area where it was easy to label them jihadis. And it turns out they had nothing to do with terrorism.”
The U.S. claims that it has only killed six civilians over almost two decades of war in Somalia. A count by the airstrike monitoring group Airwars put the number at as much as 2,600 percent higher . A 2023 investigation by The Intercept determined, for example, that a drone attack in Somalia during Trump’s first term killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter Mariam Shilow Muse. At the time of the attack, the U.S. announced it had killed “ five terrorists ” and that “no civilians were killed in this airstrike.”
Trump calls Somalia a “third-world” or “ fourth-world nation ,” says that it “ stinks ,” and disparaged Somalis who come to the U.S., saying “we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”
His most xenophobic consigliere also claims Somalia is responsible for violence that has caused people to flee the country. “The entire Somali refugee program is predicated on a lie,” wrote Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, late last year. “Destroying your own country does not give you the right to become a citizen in ours.” But this faux history disregards America’s decadeslong role in fomenting violence in Somalia and destabilizing the country.
“The presence of Somalis in the U.S. has a lot to do with U.S. wars in Somalia.”
A casualty of the Cold War geopolitics that led to widespread conflict, political repression, and millions of deaths across the developing world, Somalia has experienced persistent political instability and strife since the late 1960s. In recent decades, the country has suffered civil war, famine, droughts, a longtime al-Shabab insurgency, and persistent humanitarian crises.
Related Who Could Have Predicted the U.S. War in Somalia Would Fail? The Pentagon.
Over the last quarter century, the U.S. has intensified conflict in Somalia through direct attacks; training, funding, and running proxy forces; and funneling in weapons and other military assistance to one side of a civil war. As early as 2007, the Pentagon was aware that there were fundamental flaws with U.S. military operations in the Horn of Africa, and Somalia devolved into another forever war stalemate. This has continued, despite the record number of airstrikes in Somalia under Trump.
Before Trump took office, in 2016, Islamist militants in Somalia killed 4,281 people , according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. By August, this year’s total hit 6,731 deaths, a 57 percent increase. An analysis by the Costs of War project at Brown University found that instead of eliminating militant groups, the U.S. counterterrorism campaign in Somalia was “ensuring that the conflict continues in perpetuity.” An AFRICOM spokesperson said the command’s “operational focus remains on working with partners to degrade terrorist organizations to create the space required for Somali-led governance and stability.” But Trump claims Somalia has no government , no military , and is “ not even a country .”
“ They weren’t coming because they wanted a better job. It’s because they feared for their lives and their children’s lives.”
The Intercept interviewed people displaced by the forever war in a camp on the outskirts of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, in 2023. “We had to leave because of the drought and the conflict,” a mother of seven told this reporter. She was one of more than a dozen women from the Lower Shabelle region of southwest Somalia who spoke to The Intercept after fleeing the front lines of an offensive by the U.S.-backed Somali government against al-Shabab. Since Trump first took office, the number of Somalis forced from their homes has almost doubled from 2.4 million to 4.4 million.
“I don’t think most Americans realize that the presence of Somalis in the U.S. has a lot to do with U.S. wars in Somalia. U.S. military intervention made a bad situation worse. This led to a surge of refugees and asylum-seekers to the U.S.,” said Schmidt. “They weren’t coming because they wanted a better job. It’s because they feared for their lives and their children’s lives.”
During Trump’s first term, his administration acknowledged “ the ongoing armed conflict ” as a reason to extend temporary protected status — which grants legal status, work authorization, and protection from deportation — to Somalis in the U.S., noting the security situation was “fragile and volatile, with ongoing armed conflict among government forces, clan militias, African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) troops, and al-Shabaab.”
We’re independent of corporate interests — and powered by members. Join us.
Become a member
Join Our Newsletter
Thank You For Joining!
Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you.
Will you take the next step to support our independent journalism by becoming a member of The Intercept?
I'm in
Become a member
By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use .
Join Our Newsletter
Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you.
I'm in
Bringing the War Home Despite the increase in violence, according to Pentagon statistics, the administration terminated Somalia’s TPS designation earlier thi