Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on Thursday condemned US President Donald Trump's recent comments about Somali Americans in Minnesota as "vile" and cautioned that such rhetoric poses real-world risks.
"This creates danger," Walz said at a news conference, according to The New York Times' report. "We know how these things go, they start with taunts, they turn to violence," he added.
Walz's comments came after Trump said: "We're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country."
His remark that "we don't want them in our country," has rattled Minnesota's large Somali community, most of whom are US citizens or permanent residents.
Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth, a 2026 gubernatorial candidate, distanced herself from Trump's broad attack, saying: "There is not an entire community that is bad, and there is not an entire community that is good."
The tensions intensified as the Trump administration deployed roughly 100 federal immigration agents to Minnesota this week under Operation Metro Surge.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said agents detained "some of the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens," releasing photos of detainees from Somalia, Mexico, and El Salvador.
But immigrant advocates and state officials said actual detentions appeared limited, in part because most Somalis in Minnesota are citizens, and in part because of the extreme cold.
Walz openly mocked the operation's impact. "It appears very little is being done," he said. "They bring these people in from Texas or somewhere like that, and I'm sure they're too cold to get out of their cars and harass people."
