When immigration agents began aggressive operations in Minneapolis last month, Kowsar Mohamed started knocking on doors, fielding late-night calls and mobilising other Somali Americans into an ad-hoc response team. Many feared they were being singled out, a worry that revived memories of the state surveillance and arbitrary authority they thought they had left behind when they resettled in the United States.
More than 100 volunteers now patrol south Minneapolis, distribute "Know Your Rights" guides and escort frightened elders — part of a sweeping grassroots effort to counter what many describe as constitutionally suspect raids that are destabilising Minnesota’s roughly 80,000‑strong Somali community, one of the country’s largest refugee populations.
"You would never fathom that people would just pluck you off the streets ... and say, 'Prove to me that you're a citizen,'" Mohamed said, referring to reports of aggressive tactics by the agents. "It's not that we never thought it was impossible. We just believed the Constitution was going to protect us from this level of interrogation."
Trump’s 3,000-agent push sparks voter-intimidation fears
The deployment of 3,000 federal agents — ordered by Republican President Donald Trump — has intensified accusations from Democrats and local leaders that he is targeting a politically influential community ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, deepening fears that the operations amount to intimidation aimed at suppressing Somali voter turnout.
Trump, who has described Somalis as "garbage" who should be thrown out of the country, has said the operations are necessary to combat crime, though many of those arrested have no criminal charges or convictions. He has also cited a fraud scandal around the theft of federal funds for social-welfare programs in Minnesota to justify sending agents into the state, many of them from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Democrats and community leaders accuse the agents of harassing peaceful protesters, racial profiling and searching houses without warrants. Minneapolis has been on edge since the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by an immigration agent on January 7.
"A lot of community members escaped war and this administration is triggering another war zone," said Abdulahi Farah, co-chair of the Somali American Leadership Table, an advocacy group formed in response to hate crimes and political attacks on Somalis. He said Trump's history of racist rhetoric against Black and other immigrants of colour has emboldened far-right activists and had a destabilising effect on small businesses and citizens' general sense of safety.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to Reuters that immigrants who are served administrative warrants or I-205 removal orders "have had full due process and a final order of removal from an immigration judge."
Pushing back against immigration raids
In Cedar-Riverside, a normally bustling Somali neighbourhood lined with restaurants, boutique shops and convenience stores, business owners say activity is noticeably quieter since immigration agents arrived there last month.
"It's been really slow,” said Rashid Jama, a grocery store manager in the neighbourhood, also known as the West Bank. "A lot of our suppliers are Latino and they’re scared to come to work.”
The efforts of Mohamed, a third-year doctoral student at the University of Minnesota, are part of a broader wave of grassroots initiatives to push back by filming arrests, planning peaceful protests and accelerating voter outreach.
Some Somali Americans fear the raids are a bid to suppress voter turnout before midterm elections in November, according to over a dozen grassroots organisers, local officials and residents interviewed by Reuters.
"It's signaling that if we get rid of them, if we scare them, they're not going to come out to vote in the 2026 midterm election. We know that's the target," said Farah, whose group is partnering with other grassroots organisations to train people on priorities like opposing ICE raids as well as broader issues like affordability.
Mosques and neighbouring community centres are now turning into political education hubs in Minnesota, local leaders said.
Civil rights advocates and scholars say the Minneapolis immigration operations echo past crackdowns in Black and Latino neighbourhoods, fueling fears of political scapegoating, said political science professor Christina Greer at Fordham University.
Somali American voters have largely supported Democrats since refugees began resettling in the U.S. in the 1990s, before becoming more politically active in the 2000s. U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar is the community's most high-profile member and a frequent target of racist attacks from Trump.
Asked about that and tactics of agents decried by residents, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Reuters that immigrants “who fail to contribute to our economy, rip off Americans and refuse to assimilate into our society should not be here.”
Minnesota Republican Party Chairman Alex Plechash denied the raids were politically driven, calling the charge “categorically false”, but said complaints about aggressive tactics warrant review.
"The power we have is to vote," said Abdullahi Kahiye, 37, who said he became a naturalised US citizen in 2024. "ICE and whoever is trying to terrorise the Somali community will not succeed."
