The Trump administration and its anti-immigration campaign in Minneapolis have led to the death of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Federal agents are targeting Minneapolis heavily due to the city’s large Somali population and because of a scandal, where members of the Somali community allegedly ran fake daycares and other non-existent social services that defrauded the state.
Minnesota has the largest Somali population of any state in the country.
Somali people across the country are nervous, including the population of Somali students at Central. In the 2024-25 school year 99 students spoke Somali, according to OPS data.
The Register spoke with two Somali students, and with the announcement of their temporary protected status they were granted anonymity.
“There’s a smaller community here. It’s not huge,” one Somali student said. Omaha has been their home for almost 10 years now, saying “it’s been a great experience.”
The student said, “Me personally, I live in Omaha, Nebraska, so it’s not affecting me directly, but I have relatives in Minnesota who are getting affected by that and getting deported and not having a second chance. And even if it’s not people getting taken by ICE… they’re getting scared to go to their normal day jobs, schools. Children are afraid to go to even daycares or normal things, you know, everyday life.”
Another student said that his community thinks it isn’t right.
“They are immigration agents they need to follow the protocols and not target only one community,” the student said.
President Donald Trump removed the temporary protected status from Somalis, causing them to lose their right to work and will go into effect March 17.
“Trump is obviously targeting a minority group. There’s a bunch of minority groups out there, but he’s specifically targeting one, for what specific reason, I don’t know,” the first student said. “He’s saying that there’s fraud going on. You know, there’s fraud going on everywhere in the world. There’s fraud going on in the government. There’s fraud going on in other countries. So, to pick on one kind of group is usually unfair and it should be thought about more.”
The second student said of Omaha’s Somali community, “They’re not feeling good about it because it just came in and doesn’t make sense right now, taking that protective status from the Somalis like at this time of moment.”
The first student said, “His policies have been kind of unfair, in my opinion, with him using immigration as this kind of tactic, using immigration to scare people, even though there’s people with legal documents, he’s still coming after everything and using it as an intimidation tactic.”
