An uneasiness lingered among attendees at a meeting earlier this month at the Zawadi Center in Bloomington.
About 70 imams and community members gathered at the event space to discuss what to do about federal immigration officials arriving in Minnesota to target the Somali community.
“The mood was very tense, extremely difficult and emotional,” attendee Yusuf Abdulle, executive director of the Islamic Association of North America, told Sahan Journal.
The first hour-and-a-half consisted of numerous community members recounting interactions with agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the impact of increased enforcement action that began the first week of December.
Small Somali-owned businesses are closing or reducing hours because their employees are too scared to come into work, and several other community members have not left their homes for fear of being arrested, Abdulle said. One man told the group that he was picking up his 17-year-old son from high school and had to intervene when federal agents approached the boy, explaining to the masked men that his son was born in the United States.
“They’re stopping people who are citizens and permanent residents, asking them for their names, asking them where they were born, sometimes … looking for an accent,” Abdulle said. “People who are undocumented are fearful of this, but so is the whole community.”
Effect on mosques
Dozens of worshippers piled into Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Cedar-Riverside on a recent Friday afternoon like they do at the end of every week. Imam Asad Zaman said he’s seen no discernable decrease in attendance at his mosque, Al-Rahman in Bloomington, where Somali congregants make up about a third of the attendance.
But there have been unsettling signs that President Donald Trump’s rhetoric criticizing Somali Minnesotans is impacting mosques across the Twin Cities: The first Friday of the federal enforcement, organizations like the Immigrant Defense Network put out calls for citizen witnesses to show up at mosques because community members were reporting a heightened sense of fear.
Abdulle said he’s already noticed the chilling effect at Abubakr As-Saddique mosque in south Minneapolis, where numbers are beginning to dwindle the longer federal immigration officials remain in town.
“At least one quarter was missing,” Abdulle said of attendance at last week’s Friday prayer. “People used to wait outside. That’s how full it used to be.”
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Zaman said a man and his children were headed to one of the mosques’s other locations in Rosemount and were detained by federal immigration agents for 10 minutes. They were eventually released.
“Yesterday, a mother was sharing with me that her children were asking her, ‘Mom, do we have to carry our passports and our citizenship papers to school?’” said Khalid Omar, a community organizer with ISAIAH, a statewide coalition of faith communities.
Munir Maalim, 26, who has attended Ar-Rahman for Friday prayer since moving to Bloomington in 2018, said there’s a sense of fear among some members of the Somali community, namely those who fled the civil war in Somalia. The prospect of immigration raids and arrests could force them to relive traumatic experiences from that past, he said.
“(Trump) has tried to strike fear into the hearts of our community, specifically our elders, who have faced war,” Maalim told Sahan Journal. “For them to escape, and after 30 years for them to face the same fear that they faced back home, it’s absolutely despicable.”
How mosques are protecting worshippers
Due to high rates of citizenship among the Somali community in Minnesota, which number about 80,000, some are less concerned about interactions with federal authorities. But that hasn’t stopped mosques from beefing up security and raising awareness at and around their buildings.
Abdulle said many mosques are installing cameras, hiring private security and fortifying relationships with local police departments. They are also mobilizing their neighbors, he said, who have come out in support of their local mosques by bringing food and keeping watch.
“They connected with their neighbors, and the neighbors really showed up … by helping each other and being strong together,” he said.
Some worshippers said they aren’t as concerned about the ICE presence.
“We’re in good spirits. We just got done praying, nobody’s worried about ICE,” University of Minnesota student Hamza Ahmed said after praying at Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. “Somalis here are mostly U.S. citizens, so I don’t know what ICE is looking for. Somalis are here to stay.”
Falmata Elemo, Ammed’s classmate at the university and a worshipper at Dar Al-Hijrah, expressed the same sentiment.
“The first floor (of the mosque) was full like it always is, and people were still filling up the upstairs,” he said.
But, Elemo said, people can’t help but talk about sightings of federal agents on the University of Minnesota campus, as well as in suburbs like Burnsville.
“Given the circumstances, and because people are talking about it, it is getting a little tense,” Elemo told Sahan Journal. “Of course, if people are being profiled and stopped and harassed. We should raise awareness and concern for our community, but we shouldn’t lose hope either.”
Mohamed Mohamud, who also prayed at Dar Al-Hijrah mosque on a recent Friday, immigrated to the United States when he was four years old and has been a citizen for nearly a decade. Now 23, he said he’s not concerned about being targeted, but said it’s hard to escape the vitriol directed at Somalis online.
“People are looking down on a group of people because of the actions of a small minority,” Mohamud said, referencing local criminal fraud cases involving some East African defendants. “A lot of people online are bashing Somalis, making threats, and they’re happy Trump is saying all of this.”
Dozens of faith leaders from different religions, elected officials and worshippers gathered at Ar-Rahman mosque two weeks ago to denounce Trump’s comments and express support for Somali and community members. Zaman asked the community to stay vigilant and not succumb to attempts to spread fear.
“The Muslim community and the Somali community that is being subjected to this fear campaign, I urge you to not be afraid,” Zaman said. “We are greater than fear.”
