Kim Huisman, Mazie Hough, Kristin Langellier and Carol Toner are former faculty members at the University of Maine and members of the Somali Narrative Project. They also edited the book “Somalis in Maine: Crossing Cultural Currents.”

The hostile political climate targeting Somali Americans has escalated beyond racist rhetoric into unprecedented federal crackdowns that have now spread to Maine.

As members of the Somali Narrative Project, we spent a decade in Somali communities gathering stories for our book, “Somalis in Maine.” We met people whose lives revealed the depth, complexity and everyday courage that characterize Somali communities across the United States.

The Trump administration’s depiction of Somalis as “garbage,” coupled with an aggressive and violent crackdown on Somalis and the withdrawal of legal protections is not only deeply offensive, it is a deliberate distortion designed to inflame fear and justify racist exclusion.

The aggressive militarization in our streets has included violent arrests in homes and workplaces, the detention of U.S. citizens and immigrants alike, and the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis resident, Renee Nicole Good, by an ICE agent.

The government met the responding protest and legal challenges with more repression. Even as activists call for the federal presence to end, the Trump administration moved to revoke temporary protected status for more than 2,000 Somali migrants, deepening fear and uncertainty for families and communities.

Our work began in Maine, but the stories we documented echo in states across the country. Despite regional differences, one result is constant: Somali families rebuild their lives with fierce determination; young people, many born in the United States, study hard, attend college and start careers and families; communities contribute economically, culturally and civically to the places they call home. By 2021, nearly 65% of Maine Somalis were citizens by either birth or naturalization.

One pernicious tactic used by this administration is the deliberate magnification of isolated criminal cases — such as the small group of individuals charged with fraud in Minnesota — into sweeping indictments of an entire population. In reality, the number of people charged represents only a tiny fraction of Minnesota’s Somali community — well under 1%, a statistical blip in a population of more than 70,000. To generalize from a handful of cases to an entire ethnic group is not analysis; it is the textbook racialization of wrongdoing.

When white Americans commit fraud, we call it fraud. When Somali Americans commit fraud, certain politicians call it “culture.” If this logic is applied consistently, every community in America would stand condemned by singular crimes. 

What is happening to Somali Americans everywhere follows this pattern, treating an entire population of people as outsiders, a threat, rather than as the citizens they are, who deserve to be protected.

Somali immigrants came to this country to seek a better life, which until recently is what America offered to immigrants. As our book emphasizes, Somalis brought linguistic skills, Islamic traditions of scholarship and faith, oral poetry, extended kin networks and cultural resilience. These strengths helped families survive war and displacement, and then to build new lives in the United States, carving pathways into many professions, including meatpacking, entrepreneurship and academia.

The truth about Somali Americans stands in stark contrast with the Trump administration’s rhetoric — and the broader anti-immigrant platform advanced by Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller — that targets brown and Black people while welcoming white South Africans as refugees.

Somali communities are not threats to be monitored. They are contributors — partners in the ongoing project of creating a more equitable, interdependent and humane multicultural America.

When the president of the United States labels a community “garbage,” and his vice president pounds the table in approval, they are announcing that they believe human beings are disposable. They are sending a clear signal that a population can be thrown away, diminished or eradicated without moral consequence.

Dehumanizing language cultivates the conditions under which human rights can be dismissed, families can be separated, people can be detained and be deported to countries where they have no ties and are vulnerable to violence. The state thus justifies actions that would once have been unthinkable and makes life perilous for everyone.

But the Somali Americans across New England, the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere are living evidence of a different truth. They are parents working multiple jobs to give their children access to opportunity. They are college students majoring in political science, engineering and nursing. They are small-business owners revitalizing commercial corridors. They are imams working for peace, interpreters expanding access to health care and civic leaders advocating for neighborhoods too often overlooked by policymakers.

These stories are not peripheral to American life. They are American life.

The cultural currents we observed do not stop at the Maine border. They flow across the country, shaping how communities understand diversity, how people remake home and how a nation renews its commitment to justice. These crossings involve negotiation and tension, but they also produce new forms of belonging — ones rooted in mutual care rather than fear.

Having had the privilege of being welcomed into Somali homes and communities, we are compelled to speak clearly now. The administration’s portrayal of Somali Americans is part of a coordinated political effort to narrow the definition of who counts as American and to normalize a vision of the country grounded in racial and religious exclusion.

It is not only inaccurate, it is a profound moral failure.