Editorial: Stop Scapegoating Somali Americans

Adan Abdi is a U.S. citizen and so is his wife. His kids were all born in the U.S. But suddenly, his friends are asking him how he will be able to prove his citizenship, if an immigration agent decides he doesn’t look or sound “American.”

“To be honest, a friend called me two or three days ago, asking what I had for documents, in case if I get stopped or something like that,” he told Sampan during a recent telephone call. “I don’t always carry a passport on me.”

And why should he? The vast majority of American citizens don’t, and none are obligated to in the U.S. Many people — around half of all U.S. citizens — don’t even own a passport.

But what if, like Abdi, you belong to a community repeatedly targeted by the president or other politicians? Pres. Donald J. Trump recently took aim — again — at Somali Americans, immigrants, refugees, and even perhaps the most prominent Somali American of our time, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

Abdi expressed disappointment and annoyance — and what almost sounded like exhausted resignation — at the absurdity of the president’s recent accusations against refugees and immigrants from Abdi’s home country.

“It’s not normal and we should not take it normally,” said Abdi, who lives in Springfield, Mass., and calls himself an activist for the Somali Bantu community there. ”I don’t think, at the federal level, they should waste their time with something like this…. It’s really too low for the president. I don’t know what he has against Somalia — this guy is obsessed with us.”

Abdi spoke with the Sampan just days after Pres. Trump claimed, according to press reports, that Somali immigrants “contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country.”

The president has also repeatedly made personal and Islamophobic attacks against Minnesota’s U.S. Rep. Omar. At one rally he claimed she was in the U.S. illegally and said, “We gotta get her the hell out” after mocking her headdress. Omar is known as the first woman in Congress to wear a hijab and one of only a few U.S. lawmakers who identify as Muslim.

These repeated verbal attacks on people from Somalia and individuals like Omar might be something adults like Abdi can ignore, as childlike bullying. But what about the actual children of these families? What about the real fear they face from masked immigration agents plucking people off the streets, sometimes because of their accents or skin color? Or, as occurred recently in Massachusetts, pulling them out of line at their citizenship ceremonies?

Abdi, himself, says he tries to avoid talking about these topics with his own kids. He doesn’t want to bother them, doesn’t want them to worry.

“With my kids, I don’t like to talk about stuff like this with them. When I do, it’s just for their own safety. I don’t want to scare them. I know they hear things on the news. But I don’t really talk to them about this, and when I do, it’s only for their own safety.”

This raises perhaps an even more insidious societal harm caused by this type of language now so normal in campaign rallies and political speeches. The psychological trauma caused by anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from those in the highest elected offices is little talked about and little studied. But it only takes a tiny amount of imagination to see the toll it can take on youth and families. That toll is even more severe when these same communities have to live in fear of being singled out by overzealous immigration authorities who could use any excuse — the color of skin, the accent of a person, the country of origin or ancestry — to question someone, to detain a person, to begin deportation proceedings.

A study published a couple years ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association found a link between this kind of political rhetoric — though in that case targeted at Latino communities — and the mental health of these immigrant families and kids.

Elizabeth Vaquera, one of the study's researchers, said at the time: “Policymakers often describe immigration as a threat or danger with a focus largely on the U.S.-Mexico border without realizing the consequences of that type of rhetoric and policy approach on the millions of immigrants deeply rooted here in the U.S.”

Hateful language has been spouted about all kinds of immigrant groups by politicians lately: Chinese, Mexican, Haitian, Palestinian and Somali. All of it no doubt hits the hardest children and families who face the real threat of being ripped apart.

“What we are seeing is not normal immigration enforcement. It is political targeting,” said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) following immigration raids in that state. “Sending federal agents to the homes of law-abiding Somali residents, many of whom are U.S. citizens, in secret-police style operations is an abuse of power. We urge leaders from both political parties to speak out against this scapegoating and Islamophobic targeting.”

And earlier this month, closer to home, the Winooski School District in Vermont took its website offline and unhooked school office phones after getting a “flood of racist and violent messages” just because the district put up the Somali flag, according to a report in VTDigger.com.

But for people like Abdi, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia decades ago, all this is nothing new. During our conversation, he was quick to remind us that a dozen years ago, his own mayor in Springfield made international headlines for comments that, while vastly more restrained than Trump's, were viewed as singling out the city’s Somali and other refugee populations, which at the time only made up about tiny fraction of the city's population.

And the president and others have a history of picking on Somalian immigrants — and individuals like Omar — in particular, going so far as to call her “garbage.”

Nearly 170,000 people living in the U.S. have Somali ancestry, and while earlier in the 1900s people came as students, many since the 1990s have come here as refugees seeking safety from that war-torn and impoverished East African nation. Many now live in Minnesota and Ohio, but Massachusetts also has a significant Somali community as well. Many are Muslims, and some attend the local Mosques in Boston, Quincy ad Cambridge.

And that religious identity is also a reason the group gets targeted.

“The president is always obsessed with minorities, especially those who are Muslim,” said Abdi.

We believe bigoted and hateful attacks on Somali immigrants, refugees and citizens are harmful to all of society, but especially the most vulnerable, families and children. And we should all stand up against this hate.