Analysis: At Davos, Trump’s remarks about Somali migrants signal a familiar pattern — rhetoric that shapes policy
President Donald Trump’s jab at Somali migrants on the World Economic Forum stage in Davos did more than provoke outrage. It fit a years-long pattern in which inflammatory language about Black and African diasporas is paired with restrictive immigration moves — a feedback loop with real policy and political consequences in places like Minnesota, Maine and beyond.
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Before a crowd of foreign dignitaries and corporate leaders in Switzerland, Trump invoked an ongoing fraud scandal in Minnesota, alluding to Somalis in the state and ridiculing their intelligence. “Can you believe that? Somalia — they turned out to be higher-IQ than we thought,” he said. “I always say these are low-IQ people. How do they go into Minnesota and steal all that money?”
For scholars who track the nexus of rhetoric and regulation, the moment in Davos underscored a familiar progression. “These comments about immigrants, Somalis or whoever, eventually that becomes policy,” said Andre Perry, director of the Center for Community Uplift at the Brookings Institution. “When we kind of just let this go as, ‘Oh, that’s just Trump being Trump.’ No, that’s Trump foreshadowing policy.”
Trump’s broadside against Somalis echoes earlier attacks on migrants from majority-Black countries that, community leaders say, have coincided with harassment and bomb threats. In a 2018 closed-door meeting, he questioned why the United States accepted immigrants from “shithole countries” such as Haiti, El Salvador and several African nations instead of places like Norway. During a 2024 presidential debate, he amplified debunked claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets, asserting they were “destroying” the city.
The fixation on Minnesota’s Somali community is also not new. As far back as 2016, Trump cited a stabbing rampage by a Somali immigrant in the region as emblematic of a broader problem. Yet the Somali diaspora in the Upper Midwest is more complex than the caricature: Many fled three decades of government instability and drought, arrived legally, and, in some cases, backed Trump at the ballot box in 2024, said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“This isn’t about illegal immigrants,” said Hussein, who emigrated from Somalia in 1993. “This is about his continuous attack against Black people. He wants to get as many Black people out of here as possible. That’s why he has spent so much time attacking Haitians and African immigrants.”
Hussein noted that Minnesota Republicans who have made inroads with Somali voters often condemn fraud in social services systems without singling out the Somali community. “Instead [they have] gone after the government for failing to protect the money because they know they have no way of winning statewide without their support,” he said.
There are signs of shifting political winds. In three Minneapolis neighborhoods with large East African populations, support for Democrat Kamala Harris fell compared with Joe Biden’s 2020 performance, according to a Minnesota Star Tribune analysis of precinct results. Pew Research Center found Trump increased his support among Black voters from 8 percent in 2020 to 15 percent in 2024. At the same time, his approval among Black Americans has fallen — from 24 percent in his first three months in office to 13 percent in polls this fall, according to an average of eight nationwide surveys compiled by The Washington Post.
The White House did not directly clarify what Trump intended to convey about Somali Americans in Minneapolis. In a statement, spokeswoman Abigail Jackson defended his Davos remarks. “President Trump is right. Aliens who come to our country, complain about how much they hate America, fail to contribute to our economy, rip off Americans, and refuse to assimilate into our society should not be here,” she said.
The question, then, is how rhetoric translates into the rulebook. Recent actions suggest the administration is moving in tandem with the president’s language. Last week, officials announced plans to indefinitely halt processing visas from 75 countries — nearly half in Africa and mostly-Black Caribbean nations — in an effort to curtail applicants deemed likely to rely on government benefits. While Trump was in Switzerland, the Department of Homeland Security unveiled a new immigration operation in Maine, home to sizable communities of Somali immigrants and asylum seekers from other African countries. It follows similar pushes in Chicago and Minneapolis. And last year, the administration sharply cut the number of refugees allowed into the United States while making an exception for White South African descendants of French and Dutch settlers whose arrival to the continent dates to the 17th century and the later establishment of apartheid.
Those moves, layered atop rhetoric that paints Africans and Haitians as threats, reverberate far beyond a single scandal or city. They harden bureaucratic barriers for migrants with legitimate claims, fuel fear among legal residents and citizens with African roots, and signal to loyalists that punitive enforcement remains a governing priority.
The strategy is not without risk. Minnesota’s Republicans have tried to build a coalition that includes East African voters, especially those motivated by concerns over public safety and social services. That coalition frays when the national megaphone targets their neighbors. The Davos remarks also arrived amid data showing soft support for Trump among Black Americans writ large, complicating any effort to expand his coalition even as he made gains in 2024.
To historians, the moment slots into a longer American story. “Whether it be the rhetoric of they’re dirty, they bring in crime, they bring in drugs, they bring in disease, none of this is new,” said Westenley Alcenat, a professor of history and Africana studies at Scripps College. “You just have to look back to how Haitians were talked about in the 1980s to get a better understanding of this moment.”
What to watch next:
- Implementation and scope of the visa-processing pause affecting 75 countries, and any legal challenges.
- The reach and results of DHS’s immigration operation in Maine and similar efforts in Chicago and Minneapolis.
- How Minnesota’s political parties address fraud without stigmatizing Somali communities they increasingly court.
- Whether inflammatory national rhetoric alters turnout and party alignment in East African precincts heading into future elections.
Trump’s Davos flourish was a sound bite with a track record. When the president singles out Black and African migrants, the administration often follows with rules and enforcement that land hardest on those very communities. The domestic impact is immediate and measurable: in visa lines, in deportation sweeps, in polling shifts, and in the everyday sense of belonging for Somali Americans who, for decades, have made new lives in the Midwest — and now find themselves again at the center of a national argument about who gets to be American.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
