White House ‘looking at’ denaturalising Somali Americans for alleged fraud 

United States President Donald Trump has unleashed another attack on Somali Americans, with the White House saying the administration is reviewing plans to strip citizenship from those convicted of fraud.

The statements on Wednesday came a day after the Trump administration froze $185m in federal subsidies for low-income childcare amid claims of fraud at daycares run by Somali Americans in Minnesota’s largest city, Minneapolis.

In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote that “much of Minnesota Fraud, up to 90%, is caused by people that came into our Country, illegally, from Somalia”.

He also repeated attacks on Somali American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, calling her “one of the many scammers”.

“Send them back from where they came, Somalia, perhaps the worst, and most corrupt, country on earth,” Trump wrote.

Meanwhile, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in an interview on Fox News that the administration was “looking at” possibly revoking citizenship from Somali Americans convicted of fraud.

She said that denaturalisation remained “a tool at the president and the secretary of state’s disposal”.

Trump and his allies have repeatedly threatened to strip citizenship from an array of naturalised citizens: those born outside the US but who acquire citizenship through the government’s immigration processes.

While legal experts have noted that citizenship can be stripped from foreign-born citizens, the practice is exceedingly rare and often requires a high burden of proof, showing an individual was naturalised under false pretences.

Trump has regularly demonised immigrant communities throughout his political career.

That rhetoric was a hallmark stretching back to his first successful bid for president in 2016. While on the campaign trail, in 2015, he claimed that Mexico was sending “rapists” and criminals across the southern border into the US, spurring outrage.

Later, during his presidential run in 2024, he repeated baseless claims against Haitians living in Illinois, including that they were killing and eating pets.

In recent weeks, Trump has focused on Somali Americans, comparing them to “garbage” and criticising the legal pathways that allowed them into the country. He further claimed they were “destroying America”.

Lawmakers, community groups, and political organisations decried Trump’s statements as blatantly racist.

But Trump has accompanied his rhetoric with action. Over the past month, his administration has surged immigration enforcement agents to Minnesota, conducted a wide-scale audit of legal Somali immigrants, and prioritised investigations of fraud claims in the state.

His efforts have seized upon a scandal that has rattled the midwestern state in recent years.

Prosecutors have alleged that criminals have defrauded the state of approximately $9bn in misused social assistance funding and nearly $300m in misused COVID funding.

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday said the Justice Department has charged 98 individuals in Minnesota as part of its wide-ranging fraud investigation, adding that 85 of those charged were of “Somali descent”.

However, many of those charges pre-date Trump’s second term.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has also shot back that local and federal authorities have spent years combatting fraud in the state, which he called a “serious issue”.

In a post on the social media platform X on Wednesday, Walz said Trump is “using an issue he doesn’t give a damn about as an excuse to hurt working Minnesotans”.

Some of the Trump administration’s actions have come in the wake of a viral video uploaded by conservative YouTube Nick Shirley, who claimed Somali American-run daycare centres in Minneapolis had committed up to $100m in fraud.

Shirley’s video has received 127 million views on X, and administration officials, including Bondi, have repeatedly cited his claims.

For instance, on Tuesday, FBI Director Kash Patel said in a social media post that his organisation “is aware of recent social media reports in Minnesota”.

He added that the bureau had “surged personnel and investigative resources to Minnesota to dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programmes”.

Still, questions have arisen over the accuracy of Shirley’s video.

An investigation by CBS News this week found that “all but two” of the daycares featured in the video had active licences and “were visited by state regulators within the last six months”.

Those regulators issued several citations, according to the report, but “there was no recorded evidence of fraud”.