Critics condemn ‘bigoted attack’ as Trump bids to revoke citizenship of naturalized immigrants convicted of fraud
The Trump administration is terminating temporary protected status (TPS) for Somalis living in the United States, giving hundreds of people two months to leave the country or face deportation.
The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said in a statement that conditions in the east African country had improved sufficiently and that Somalis no longer qualified for the designation under federal law.
“Temporary means temporary,” Noem wrote, adding that allowing Somali nationals to remain was “contrary to our national interests”.
“We are putting Americans first,” she added.
Then Donald Trump said his administration was going to revoke the US citizenship of any naturalized immigrant from Somalia or any other country who is convicted of defrauding what he referred to as “our citizens”.
The US president made the remarks in a wider speech at the Detroit Economic Club while on a trip to Michigan and did not go into further detail at the time. There is a high level of US citizenship by naturalization among Somali American communities in Minnesota.
The Trump administration had first announced its intention to end protection for Somali nationals in November, with Trump writing on his Truth Social platform about Minnesota, which is home to a large Somali community: “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from. It’s OVER!”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), which advocates for fair treatment of Muslims in the US, on Tuesday criticized the latest rollback of rights as a “bigoted attack” that will send some Somalis back to a war-torn, unstable nation.
“This decision does not reflect changed conditions in Somalia,” Cair said in a statement released jointly with its Minnesota chapter. “By dismantling protections for one of the most vulnerable Black and Muslim communities, this decision exposes an agenda rooted in exclusion, not public safety.”
The administration has used Minnesota’s issues with fraud as a pretext to send a surge of immigration officers into the state. Trump has called Somalis “garbage” and referenced unverified reports, amplified by Republican lawmakers, suggesting the militant group al-Shabaab in Somalia benefited from fraud committed in Minnesota, though these claims have not been substantiated.
On Monday, Minneapolis and St Paul filed a lawsuit against the administration, alleging Minnesota was being targeted for its diversity and political differences with the federal government. “[Department of Homeland Security] agents have sown chaos and terror across the metropolitan area,” said Keith Ellison, the state’s attorney general. Last week, the American citizen Renee Good was fatally shot in the head by a federal immigration agent in south Minneapolis during an enforcement operation, sparking tens of thousands to march in protest across the US.
The decision to withdraw TPS for Somalis in the US, first reported by Fox News Digital, affects 705 Somali nationals currently holding TPS, according to official US Citizenship and Immigration Services data as of August 2025. They have until 17 March before their status expires. Anonymous immigration sources cited higher figures to Fox News of about 2,471 current beneficiaries and another 1,383 applications.
TPS is granted by the Department of Homeland Security to foreign nationals who cannot safely return to their home countries due to armed conflict, natural disasters or other extraordinary circumstances. The protection allows individuals to live and work legally in the US until conditions improve in their homeland.
Somalis were first granted TPS by the administration of George HW Bush in 1991 during Somalia’s civil war. The status has been repeatedly renewed by successive administrations, most recently by Joe Biden in September 2024, who extended it through March 2026.
Somalia remains plagued by persistent violence from al-Shabaab militants, severe drought conditions and widespread humanitarian crises that have displaced millions of people internally, according to UN reports. Human rights organizations have warned that returning Somali nationals to the country could place them at severe risk.
The Congressional Research Service last spring said the Somali TPS population was 705 out of nearly 1.3 million TPS immigrants in the US. Trump has ended protections across multiple countries in his second presidency as part of his crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration in the US.
Somalia is one of the world’s poorest countries and has for decades been beset by chronic strife exacerbated by multiple natural disasters, including severe droughts. The al-Qaida affiliate al-Shabaab controls parts of the country and has carried out truck bombings and other assaults in the capital, Mogadishu, in recent years that killed dozens of people.
Congress established the temporary protected status program in 1990 to help foreign nationals fleeing unstable, threatening conditions in their home countries and are living in the US. It allows the executive branch to designate a country, generally in 18-month increments, for the protected status.
Approved recipients can legally work and are protected from deportation but there is no pathway to a green card or US citizenship and they are reliant on the government renewing the TPS designation every few years.
It was not immediately clear how quickly those Somalis covered by TPS could be removed from the country once their protections expire. Most attempts by the administration to end a TPS designation have ended up in the courts.
