Last week, President Trump attacked Somali immigrants in the nation during a Cabinet meeting, calling them “garbage” and saying that he didn’t want them in the U.S. Meanwhile, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is ramping up its activity in the Minneapolis metro area in Minnesota. That state is home to nearly 80,000 people of Somali descent, the largest such population in the nation.
In Oregon, there are roughly 12 to 15,000 people of Somali descent, most of whom live in Multnomah County, according to a 2016 county report. Musse Olol emigrated from Somalia to Oregon in 1981 and is the executive director of the Somali American Council of Oregon, which he co-founded in 2011. He says fear has gripped Somalis living in the Portland metro area, even among naturalized U.S. citizens such as himself. He joins us to share his perspective and the heightened tension within the local Somali community.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Last week, President Trump launched a tirade against Somali immigrants at a Cabinet meeting, calling them “garbage” and saying that he did not want them in the U.S. Meanwhile, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been ramping up their raids in Minnesota, which is home to nearly 80,000 people of Somali descent. That’s the largest Somali community in the country.
Oregon has had a sizable Somali American community for decades as well. Musse Olol is the executive director of the Somali American Council of Oregon. He joins us now. It’s great to have you back on the show.
Musse Olol: Thank you for having me on the show. Thank you.
Miller: How did you first hear about the president’s comments?
Olol: It was through somebody who sent me the link. It was a work day and somebody sent me the link that we’re all concerned and worried about. Especially the language that was selected was very demeaning, something that was not expected for somebody at that level of higher office coming out. Because it has a power that comes behind that. So that’s how I got the first information.
Miller: Donald Trump launched his first presidential run with a tirade about Mexican immigrants. He used swear words to talk about Haiti, El Salvador and various African countries. And broadly, and for years or decades, he has normalized and amplified countless racist tropes. So on some level, it’s sad to say, it’s not surprising that he would say what he said. But what, to you, was new about these comments about Somali Americans?
Olol: It’s more like the level, [which] seems to be lower, but also being in a big umbrella. If you’re under the Muslim community, the Asian community or Latino community, it is a bigger umbrella. But specifically isolating a population that’s a max of 150,000 to 200,000 in the entire United States is a very narrow, smaller percentage of population. And that was much, much more different this time. Even though we’re not quite surprised, nevertheless we’re surprised that it was specifically name-calling. Not only Somali-Americans but also Somalis overall, which is 25 million in the whole world.
Miller: You’ve been in the U.S. for nearly 45 years now. Have you ever experienced anything like this in your country of naturalized citizenship?
Olol: I have never seen this one. I came to America a few months before Ronald Reagan was elected president. I’ve always had some disagreements with his policies. But I’ve never seen this level of personal insult, directed to a specific community.
Miller: Including after 9/11, where there was Islamophobia but less so … I don’t remember people targeting, for example, talking about Somali immigrants.
Olol: Yeah it was a big umbrella, as much as over a billion-and-a-half people, so it feels like there’s more cushion that way. But specifically targeting a few hundred, no more than 150,000 to 220,000, at best, who live in the United States.
Miller: What have you heard from members within the Somali community or communities here in the Portland area since those comments?
Olol: There were a lot of worries and people really did not know … They were confused about, first of all, why we were targeted. The majority of the population of Somali Americans are 85% to 86% United States citizens. Almost 58% are born in the United States. So the people impacted [by] the TPS was only 725 or some small, minute number.
Miller: That’s a temporary protected status.
Olol: Correct. So that should not reflect on a population of 150,000 people within the United States to target only that one. Also, those who are accused of crimes are probably no more than a few dozen. Again, every community, every humans have a portion of criminality. It really did not make any sense why the words came out of our president.
Miller: How big is the Somali American community in Oregon right now?
Olol: The last numbers we took, it was 12,000 to 15,000. Bear in mind, it’s 2017. After that election happened, the arrivals were banned. So the numbers literally came to a halt overnight, to almost to zero. During the presidency of Biden, President Biden, [it] was restarted, but a very slow start. So they’re trickling back, but never at the level of before 2017.
Miller: It seems like a long time ago, but not that long ago – 10 months ago or so – we were talking about the huge and sort of overnight changes to refugee resettlement. Were there people from Somalia whose arrival here had been in the works, who have never come?
Olol: The people that stopped … they have the plane tickets to arrive here. Not only they went through the vetting process, which is very thorough, including blood samples, stool samples, fingerprints, both the U.S. Immigration and also the FBI doing the interviews and background checks. So they went through all that process and were ready to arrive. And at the last minute – these are like somebody’s sister, somebody’s wife, somebody’s daughter – [they] were stopped from coming to America.
Miller: I noted that the administration has started doing more raids, seemingly targeting Somali immigrants in Minnesota, which has a good chunk of our country’s Somali American population. Have you seen similar efforts in Oregon?
Olol: We did not see any specifically targeting the Somali community. In the Rosewood area, there was an incident that happened not long ago. That area has a lot of Somali families which, for four hours, I heard they were blocked in. They couldn’t go to work, not to mention the terror. Even if you have a status, the terror that you feel when you have a uniformed police coming to your area. That’s what the terror fight is. But we have not heard or seen any specific targeting of Somali here in Oregon.
Miller: You, as I noted, are a naturalized U.S. citizen. Have you changed your behavior at all because of the increase in immigration actions that are not limited to undocumented people or people with criminal records?
Olol: Absolutely. I mean, I fit the target that they talk about. I’ve seen people that look Somali, whether they’re Ethiopian or even African American that have Somali features, they’ve been stopped. There’s a lot of documentation and videos on social media. So one character I do which I never had to worry about, unless I’m traveling overseas or even crossing the country to Canada, Mexico, was to carry my passport card …
Miller: So not just a driver’s license, but now everywhere you go you carry your passport?
Olol: Absolutely. It’s in my wallet, just like my driver’s license and any critical pieces of ID that I need.
Miller: What is the Somali American Council of Oregon doing these days and has that changed in the last year?
Olol: I mean, Somali American Council was created to begin with to be the voice for the Somali community starting in 2011, the [Quest pirating] incident. And in 2017, there was actually a pilot that created the center, because we didn’t have a center before that. It was a community that gets spooked about the words that’s coming out of somebody running for office. So we’re still doing that work and talking to people.
It’s very difficult sometimes when you don’t have all the answers, when you don’t know what tomorrow is gonna bring. But I can give you one specific example of things that we do. Last Friday, we had a prayer time, about 12:30 is when that is, and the parking lot in front of the mosque is a huge parking lot where one of the mosques is located. There are about a dozen buses, transport – those were tourist-size buses. And people panicked and worried, and we had to call the management. We had to talk to the people and confirm that, fortunately, they were there for an event for golf that was going on nearby.
Miller: You thought it was some kind of potential immigration enforcement action and those were there to round people up or to take them away. They were golf tourists?
Olol: They were golf tourists. But that shows you the level of intense tension that people have. That’s pretty much top of their head. You will not panic, not worry about dozens of white buses there. But now, it’s like, “what are they here for?”
Miller: Oh, in the past, if you’ve been going to the mosque for some event, if you saw some buses 10 or 15 years ago, you wouldn’t have thought anything about it?
Olol: It would not be an issue whatsoever. But now, you have to ask and verify and call the management to make sure what they’re doing here.
Miller: You said that one of the challenges now is, if I understood you correctly, that people come to you with questions and you don’t always have answers. What are the questions people come to you with now?
Olol: The question is: “What’s going to happen to us if ICE comes to us? What do we need to do? What’s going on nationally. Why are we targeted?” Answers that I don’t have. I don’t wanna let the politicians define that, but I don’t have straight answers as to why we’re targeted on such words that were going on. So these are the questions that mostly the community members always ask. “Are we safe? What do we need to do?” And we’re trying to give them instructions, but we don’t have all the answers for them, just like the majority of the people that I know.
Miller: What have you heard from other Oregonians, from non-Somali Oregonians over the last week?
Olol: I always brag to people from the community that live in the states that we live in the Portland metro area and glad we live in Oregon because we have outpourings of support: emails, letters, texts. As I’m sitting and waiting for this interview, there’s actually emails that came into all kinds of groups, different religions, different backgrounds, offering support, including physically coming out to stand with us. So that’s actually very encouraging. Even simple texts can make a lot, especially when the community is in this level of intense situation.
Miller: That does seem, then, potentially like a difference from the post-9/11 time when there was a very documented uptick in acts of Islamophobia all across the country. So you haven’t seen that in the last year?
Olol: This year, we’ve seen some incidents of somebody being called … [There was] a young lady who was in line for Fred Meyers and somebody had a dog. Culturally, the Somali community having dogs is not part of the culture. So when she kind of moved away with the fear, the person called her literally that she’s one of the Somali “scammers.” And also, two young ladies from Portland State reported to me that one guy came after them and called them looking like Ilhan Omar.
So the words are actually trickling back to some people down here and believing that what was said is actually truth. And these are the people that are worried, even though they’re very small, very minute, but nevertheless, it takes one incident. Remember [Jeremy] Christian in 2017 – two people lost their lives and one was injured in a hate crime. And he was targeting her because she looked like a typical Somali girl with a hijab.
Miller: Musse Olol, thank you very much for coming in today. I appreciate it.
Olol: Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak and share the community issues.
Miller: Musse Olol is the executive director of the Somali American Council of Oregon.
“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.
If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.
