Somali Americans Brought Tea to Protesters Despite Being Targeted by ICE

Minnesota’s Somali community—shaped by war, displacement, and resilience—faces fear and trauma, yet shows up with tea, sambusas, and solidarity in the streets.

Ilhan Omar speaking at worker protest against Amazon in 2018/ Photo: Fibonacci Blue from Minnesota, USA

In the days after federal immigration agents flooded Minneapolis, Somali families brought thermoses of tea and trays of sambusas to ICE protestors standing in the cold. They handed out food while staying largely indoors themselves—afraid to drive, walk or draw attention.

Minnesota is home to roughly 84,000 people of Somali descent, the largest Somali population outside Somalia itself. Most arrived in the 1990s and early 2000s, fleeing a country that collapsed after the fall of its military government in 1991. Civil war, famine, and clan-based violence killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. Many spent years in refugee camps in Kenya before being resettled in the United States under explicit humanitarian protections.

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On a cold January afternoon in Minneapolis, Renee Good—a white 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen—was sitting in her SUV when federal immigration agents surrounded her. An ICE agent circled the vehicle on foot. Others pulled at the door handle. When Good began to drive away, the agent fired three shots, killing her in public view.

For Somali Americans, this moment feels achingly familiar. Many fled a country where armed men operated without accountability—where militias ruled neighborhoods, where a wrong encounter could make you disappear. Now, they are watching armored federal vehicles roll through the streets of the place they were told would keep them safe.

They were not economic migrants chasing opportunity. They were refugees fleeing for their lives.

In Minnesota, they rebuilt. Somali families opened restaurants and grocery stores, established mosques, and worked as caregivers and essential workers. Their children attend public schools, learned English, and grew up American. Today, Somali is the second most common non-English language spoken in Minnesota students’ homes after Spanish. The community eventually elected Ilhan Omar to Congress.

This community is now facing one of the largest immigration enforcement operations in U.S. history.

The Department of Homeland Security deployed 2,000 federal agents across the Minneapolis–St. Paul area under what it called Operation Metro Surge. The stated justification was alleged fraud involving a few Somali residents, amplified by right-wing media coverage.

The Trump administration also terminated Temporary Protected Status for Somali nationals, ordering them to leave the country by March 17. CBS News reports that DHS officials said roughly 2,500 people would be affected but a 2023 Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota fact sheet put the number of Somali TPS holders in the state closer to 430.

“This unjustifiable policy targeting Somali TPS holders is the administration’s latest bigoted attack on the Somali community,” Council of American Islamic Relations and CAIR–Minnesota said in a statement. “The Somali TPS program affects fewer than a thousand people, yet its termination carries enormous consequences for families who have lived and worked lawfully in this country for decades.”

The U.S. State Department continues to designate Somalia as a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” country—the highest danger classification. Under federal law, TPS can only be terminated if the conditions that justified protection have resolved. The government’s own warnings make clear they have not.

For Somali families, the sight of armed agents flooding their neighborhoods triggers a specific historical trauma. They fled a country where anyone with a gun could make you disappear. Now they are watching federal agents do the same, backed by a president who publicly called them “garbage.”

The fear is visible. Somali Uber and Lyft drivers have stopped working. Mosques report emptier Friday prayers. Parents keep children home. Community organizations and churches are raising money to deliver groceries to families who no longer feel safe leaving their homes. Mutual aid funds are covering rent for families whose breadwinners have been detained or disappeared into the system. Some are paying for hotel rooms after windows were smashed during raids.

Renee Good’s death became the flashpoint not because she was the intended target, but because her killing revealed the cost of a system built to intimidate. When rhetoric strips people of their humanity and policy turns neighborhoods into occupied zones, violence becomes inevitable.

Minnesota’s Somali community survived civil war, famine, refugee camps, and the long journey to a country that promised safety. Now they are being asked to survive America—quietly, indoors, under watch.

They respond the way they always have—with fear, resilience, and tea poured for strangers standing in the cold.

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