‘We’re Putting America First’: Trump Admin Ends Temporary Protected Status For Thousands Of Somalis

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President Donald Trump ended temporary protected status for thousands of Somalis living in the United States, ordering them to leave the country by March 17.

“Temporary means temporary,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News Digital Tuesday. “Country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status.”

“Further, allowing Somali nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interests,” Noem said. “We are putting Americans first.”

Roughly 2,471 Somali nationals currently live in the U.S. under temporary protected status, according to Fox.

An estimated 600 of them are living in Minnesota.

There are also 1,383 Somalis living in the country with pending applications for temporary protected status, the outlet reported.

If Somalis who are subject to the order refuse to leave the United States by March, they will likely become targets of federal immigration authorities.

The policy change comes just one day after Minneapolis and St. Paul announced a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its mass deportation sweeps in Minnesota.

The lawsuit seeks to “end the unlawful, unprecedented surge of the federal law enforcement agents into Minnesota,” state Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a press conference on Monday.

“The obvious targeting of Minnesota for our diversity, for our democracy, and our differences of opinion with the federal government is a violation of the Constitution and of federal law,” he said.

The feud between the Trump administration and officials in Minnesota boiled over after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good, who was reportedly tied to a radical ICE Watch organization tracking the agency’s whereabouts.

The president has accused Good of committing an act of “domestic terrorism” after she was seen in footage blocking a road the ICE agents were trying to pass through before she ignored their commands to get out of the car. Good was then seen putting her car in reverse and backing up, before driving forward.

One video appears to show the agent taking a hit as he stood in front of the vehicle before shots were fired.

The Trump administration has also zeroed in on Minnesota’s Somali community after federal authorities revealed last month that an estimated $9 billion in taxpayer funds may have been stolen as part of a massive fraud campaign that’s largely been tied to the population.

The fraudsters are accused of funneling cash from state welfare programs through fake nonprofits and shell companies back to Somalia — and even Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab, City Journal reported last month.



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