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Rep. Tom Emmer criticized for comments about Somali Minnesotans on Fox News • Minnesota Reformer [1]
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Date: 2025-07-25
U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer, a Republican who represents Minnesota’s 6th District, singled out Somali Minnesotans in a Fox News segment, prompting a response from Somali advocates.
“These Somali gangs are incredibly dangerous,” Emmer said. “And yet no one in the Minnesota media is reporting that that’s what’s going on. We’ve got Somali gangs that are causing these problems. Good news is I visited with our FBI last week and they’re taking action. But it’s been a long time coming.”
Emmer, who is the current House majority whip, was being interviewed about the Minneapolis mayoral race on the Fox News show “The Bottom Line.” Somali-American state Sen. Omar Fateh, who was born in the United States, was endorsed for mayor by city DFL delegates Saturday.
Fartun Weli, the CEO of Isuroon, a Somali-American women’s organization, released a statement Thursday in response to Emmer’s comments.
“Somali-American families are working hard to prevent and intervene in youth violence, and we won’t let baseless accusations undermine our efforts. Emmer’s race-based language only serves to deepen the racial divide,” Weli said. “By calling Somali-Americans — even those born here — just ‘Somalis,’ Emmer pushes a racially charged narrative that erases their American identity.”
Data show that insofar as Emmer is concerned about crime in Minnesota, he should focus at least as much on American-born citizens as immigrants: A 2023 paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research indicates that “as a group, immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than the US-born for 150 years. Moreover, relative to the US-born, immigrants’ incarceration rates have declined since 1960: immigrants today are 60% less likely to be incarcerated.”
Last year, Emmer called for Rep. Ilhan Omar to resign over an incorrect translation of Omar’s comments about the strife between Somalia and a breakaway region called Somaliland. “Ilhan Omar’s appalling, Somalia-first comments are a slap in the face to the Minnesotans she was elected to serve and a direct violation of her oath of office,” Emmer wrote on X. When the Reformer published a story correcting the faulty translation, Emmer didn’t respond to inquiries.
Although Emmer’s Fox News comments are not out of character with his more recent statements, there was a time when he defended Somali-Americans from attacks by local anti-Somali activists.
A decade ago, Emmer created a Congressional Somalia Caucus with then-U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison. When people in St. Cloud called for a moratorium on Somali immigrants, he pushed back, calling the proposed ban “un-American.”
“If you’re asking me how I feel about immigrant populations who are in this country legally, and who are actually trying to find a better way for themselves and their families, I support it wholeheartedly,” he said at a town hall in 2015.
Minnesota has the largest population of Somali-Americans in the U.S.
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