Rep. Ilhan Omar

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is seen before President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the US Capitol on March 4, 2025.

(Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

After Trump's Latest Racist Rant, Ilhan Omar Hopes 'He Gets the Help He Desperately Needs'

“His obsession with me is creepy," said Rep. Ilhan Omar, the first Somali American ever elected to the US Congress.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, the first Somali American ever elected to the US Congress, said Tuesday that she hopes President Donald Trump "gets the help he needs" after he ended a Cabinet meeting with a bigoted tirade against Somali immigrants.

Trump specifically attacked Minnesota's Somali community—falsely claiming that "they contribute nothing"—and singled out Omar (D-Minn) by name, calling her "garbage" and a "terrible person."

Omar hit back in a brief social media post, characterizing the president's remarks as clear evidence that he's unwell.

"His obsession with me is creepy," Omar wrote.

Trump's comments came as his administration prepared to target Somali immigrants with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. Around 80,000 Somalis live in Minnesota.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the directive for ICE raids in Minnesota "came immediately after" Trump used his social media platform to launch an appalling attack on Somalis and others in the wake of the shooting of two National Guard members. The man charged with the shooting is an Afghan national who worked as a member of a CIA-backed "Zero Unit" during the war in Afghanistan before resettling in the US.

Kristi Noem, head of the US Department of Homeland Security, has exploited the shooting to ramp up the administration's anti-immigrant agenda, proposing what she called "a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies," echoing Trump's white nationalist rhetoric.

Following Trump's latest attack on Somalis, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement that the president's "disgraceful attacks on Minnesota’s Somali community are injecting more of his poisonous racism into our beloved home state."

"Hearing him single out our people based solely on their race and country of origin is downright disgusting," Ellison said. "Minnesotans stand up for our neighbors when they're under attack. And as Minnesota's attorney general, I will use every tool I have to protect all our neighbors, including our vibrant Somali community, from these dangerous, racist threats. Our neighbors deserve no less."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.