Thursday July 9, 2026
Malika Dahir, executive director of Reviving Sisterhood, speaks to reporters at Karmel Mall in south Minneapolis on July 8, 2026, about President Donald Trump’s social media post concerning Gateway STEM Academy’s kindergarten graduation. Credit: Dymanh Chhoun | Sahan Journal
Minneapolis (AX) — Minnesota’s Somali American and Muslim leaders are accusing President Donald Trump of putting children in the political crosshairs, condemning on Wednesday what they described as an escalation of anti-Somali and anti-Muslim rhetoric from the White House.
The rebuke came after Trump shared a social media post earlier this week that included a photograph from a kindergarten graduation at Gateway STEM Academy, a K-8 school in St. Paul, Minnesota. The image showed several Somali children, alongside a caption from another account that read, “Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Interfaith community members gathered Wednesday morning at Karmel Mall in Minneapolis to denounce what they called the politicization and public targeting of Somali students.
“The highest level of our government is attacking children. Imagine that,” said Imam Yusuf Abdulle, executive director of the Islamic Association of North America.
Abdulle said Muslim children in Minnesota should be able to come of age with a clear sense that they belong both in the state and in the country.
“Our children deserve to grow up knowing they are fully part of this state and this country, not to be told they do not belong because of what they wear, not to be told they are not as American as their classmates because they wear hijab,” Abdulle said. “That is the Minnesota we believe in. That is the America we hope for.”
Malika Dahir, executive director of Reviving Sisterhood, said the public debate had crossed a line by turning young children into political props.
“Children should be our red line,” Dahir said. “They’re not symbols to be exploited. They’re children. Let’s protect them with our words. Let’s protect them with our action.”
Community leaders said Trump’s post did not stand alone. They pointed to what they called a wider pattern of hostility aimed at Muslims and Somalis, citing threatening voicemails and the May burning of a school bus after a federal raid targeting day care and autism resource centers suspected of fraud.
“We are here not because of one incident, but a pattern,” Dahir said. “We have stood at podiums like this before. Just a couple of months ago we stood right here after a school bus was set on fire, yet here we are again because this has become a pattern, a pattern that should trouble every one of us.”
The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said that by circulating the children’s image on a global platform, Trump exposed the students and their school to potential danger.
Dahir urged Minnesotans of all political backgrounds to draw a firm line against the public targeting of children.
The backlash unfolded in the same week that Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said a small number of Somali youths involved in gangs were behind more than a dozen homicides in the metro area.
Abdisalam Adam, principal at East African Elementary Magnet School in St. Paul, said officials should not conflate ethnicity, culture and crime.
“Lumping the Somali community together and naming everything Somali is a big problem that we need to call out,” Adam said.
Minneapolis City Council Vice President Jamal Osman criticized Fletcher’s comments on Tuesday, describing them as disappointing.
“Somali youth deserve investment, dignity, opportunity and respect — not public officials using their platform to stereotype them,” Osman said.
Community leaders said Trump has repeatedly singled out Somali immigrants and Somalia in public statements and policy moves during his second administration. They said those remarks and actions have helped deepen a climate of fear and hostility for Somali and Muslim communities across Minnesota.
