Somali immigrant who voted for Trump lashes out at president: ‘My children are not garbage!’

The Somali immigrant community in Minnesota is reacting to President Donald Trump‘s recent remarks referring to them as “garbage” during a recent Cabinet meeting at the White House.

One of those Somalis who voted for Trump in the 2024 election publicly rebuked the president for his very personal verbal attack.

When confronted about Trump referring to him and his community as “garbage,” Mohamed Ahmed, president of Minnesota Republican People of Color, told CNN’s Whitney Wild, “Mr President, we campaigned for you. We have hope in you. We see hope in you. Please differentiate between good, bad and evil.”

As theGrio previously reported, Trump said on Tuesday of Somalis living in Minnesota, including Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, “We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”

He added, “Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people that say, let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great. These are people that do nothing but complain. They complain, and from where they came from, they got nothing.”

Ahmed, who said he’s been a Republican for more than 25 years, personally took offense to Trump’s statements, telling CNN, “I got five children. My children are not garbage!”

Congresswoman Omar, a former Somali refugee who is now a U.S. citizen, hit back at Trump over his personal attack, telling NPR’s “Morning Edition” that his remarks were “vile.”

However, the Minnesota lawmaker said she was not surprised because Trump has “trafficked in racism, in xenophobia, in bigotry, in Islamophobia for as long as he has held office.”

Omar said she believes the president is targeting Somalis in Minnesota to “deflect” from public scrutiny of his handling of the economy and accusations against the Trump administration committing war crimes by striking boats in the Caribbean Sea.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz also slammed the president for his “garbage” remarks, condemning them as “horrific slurs.”

“The President of the United States called Minnesotans garbage and a hellhole. These are doctors, these are teachers, these are entrepreneurs, these are children,” Walz said in a statement. “The reason President Trump is throwing racial slurs out, the reason he’s throwing horrific slurs at me …or to Ilan Omar is because he’s failing on every front. It’s because it’s collapsing around him.”