Migrants. The media. Liberals. When it comes to targets of Donald Trump‘s hatred, there are many groups to choose from.
Yet his loathing of people from Somalia, whom he has repeatedly and viciously attacked throughout his political career, has returned to the spotlight this week over the US decision to bar a World Cup referee.
Omar Abdulkadir Artan, who was Africa’s referee of the year in 2025, was denied entry to the United States despite holding a diplomatic passport and a single entry US visa.
Artan, 34, endured an 11-hour interrogation by border officials in Miami airport, according to media reports, with a US official saying he was suspected of having ties to the Somali terrorist group Al Shabab.
Artan, who would have become the first Somali to officiate at a World Cup, will now not be able to attend the tournament. Artan told the New York Times that he had the correct documents and visa, adding “I think that they have a problem with my country.”
Fifa confirmed that he “will be unable to train and officiate at the Fifa World Cup 2026”. The governing body passed responsibility for the situation to the US government, saying that they were “informed by authorities that Mr Artan’s status will not be changed at present”.
Somalia’s government said it had unsuccessfully tried to negotiate with the US and Fifa so that Artan could enter the country and was saddened by what had happened. “His international achievements are a source of honour and pride for the Somali people,” the sports ministry said.
Artan returning to Somalia on Tuesday. He said: ‘I think that they have a problem with my country’ (Photo: Abuukar Mohamed Muhidin/Anadolu/Getty Images)Trump’s crusade against Somalis
But the banning of Artan is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the President’s campaign against Somalis.
Despite there only being an estimated 260,000 people of Somali descent living in America (around 0.08 percent of the population), according to the 2024 Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey, they have been the victim of an aggressive crusade from the President.
The President has previously called Somalia a “shithole country” that is “filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime”.
Only last June, Trump placed a full entry ban under any visa category on 12 countries, including Somalia. That came after the notorious “Muslim ban” from his first term, when he suspended the entry of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, again including Somalia.
Just two days before the World Cup draw in December, Trump made a series of disparaging comments about Somalis.
“With Somalia, which is barely a country, you know, they have no anything,” he said. “They just run around killing each other. There’s no structure.”
Donald Trump previously banned people from seven majority Muslim countries from entering the US (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)He added that Somali immigrants should “go back to where they came from” and that the US would “go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage to our country”.
Questioning why there were so many African immigrants in the US, he said: “We always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime. The only thing they’re good at is going after ships.”
The President’s claims about Somalia appear to refer to the decades of war and humanitarian crises that have afflicted the country, leading to a global diaspora of around two million Somalis. His latter claim appeared to refer to Somali pirates in the Red Sea.
Trump’s comments resonate with his base
Trump “has created a narrative that Somali people are not compatible or shouldn’t be allowed into Western civilisation because they’re breaking it down,” Andrew Moran, professor of politics and international relations at the London Metropolitan University, told The i Paper.
“He’s tapping into people’s fears, he’s picking on vulnerable groups and this is something that we see Trump do again and again.”
Demonstrators in Minneapolis, Minnesota protest against immigration enforcement officers as the Trump administration targets the Somali immigrant community in Minnesota in December (Photo: Stephen Maturen/ Getty Images)John Mark Hansen, a professor of political science from the University of Chicago, said Trump “has been disparaging of Muslims from his very first political campaign in 2016. He and his defenders would say ‘it’s not racism’ but it’s one of those things where if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.”
“It resonates with his supporters because there is part of his base that harbours the same attitudes on race and religion.”
He added: “The other part of it is that they’re an immigrant community and immigration has been one of his signature issues.”
Trump’s vendetta against congresswoman
One of the key figures on whom Trump has focused his ire is Somalia-born Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
This year, violence broke out in, where many Somali immigrants live, after a conservative influencer accused daycare centres in the community of widespread fraud. Business owners and families of Somali descent were threatened, with some centres vandalised.
Most of the fraud defendants were of Somali descent, prompting Trump to call both them and Omar “crooked as hell”.
In December the US Department of Health and Human Services announced a freeze on childcare payments to Minnesota amid a federal investigation into the fraud claims, then this year, the Trump administration cited the fraud claims justification for sending thousands of immigration and customs agents into Minneapolis and the rest of the state.
Trump has made a series of discredited claims against Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (Photo: Heather Diehl/Getty Images)The Minnesota fraud scandal has become an immense political issue in the US, and Omar has become “guilty by association”, said Hansen.
Omar, who has long faced threats of violence, has denied any involvement in the scandal.
Trump has also previously claimed that “she married her brother in order to get in [to the US]… therefore she’s here illegally”.
Moran described the claim as “outrageous”, adding that there was no evidence that this claim is true.
Somalis are by no means the only group of people that Trump has targeted – during his 2024 election campaign he incorrectly claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs.
Moran said this campaign was a move by Trump to “tap into a historical legacy in America where in the past people of colour were seen as inferior”.
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