Thursday July 9, 2026
Malika Dahir, executive director of Reviving Sisterhood, speaks to reporters at Karmel Mall in south Minneapolis on July 8, 2026, about President Donald Trump’s social media post concerning Gateway STEM Academy's kindergarten graduation. Credit: Dymanh Chhoun | Sahan Journal
Minneapolis (HOL) — Somali American and Muslim community members in Minnesota condemned President Donald Trump on Wednesday over his growing anti-Somali and anti-Muslim rhetoric.
The condemnation followed a social media post earlier this week by Trump that featured a photo from a kindergarten graduation showing several Somali children at a K-8 school in St. Paul, Minnesota. The post included a caption from another account that said, “Every girl is in a hijab ... in kindergarten.”
“The highest level of our government is attacking children. Imagine that,” said Imam Yusuf Abdulle, executive director of the Islamic Association of North America.
Abdulle said Muslim children should be able to grow up knowing they belong in Minnesota and the United States.
“Our children deserve to grow up knowing they are fully part of this state and this country, not to be told they do not belong because of what they wear, not to be told they are not as American as their classmates because they wear hijab,” Abdulle said. “That is the Minnesota we believe in. That is the America we hope for.”
Malika Dahir, executive director of Reviving Sisterhood, said children should not be used as political symbols.
“Children should be our red line,” Dahir said. “They’re not symbols to be exploited. They’re children. Let’s protect them with our words. Let’s protect them with our action.”
Community leaders said the incident is part of a broader pattern of hostility toward Muslims and Somalis, including threatening voicemails and the burning of a school bus in May after a federal raid targeting day care and autism resource centers suspected of fraud.
“We are here not because of one incident, but a pattern,” Dahir said. “We have stood at podiums like this before. Just a couple of months ago we stood right here after a school bus was set on fire, yet here we are again because this has become a pattern, a pattern that should trouble every one of us.”
The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Trump’s post placed children and their school at risk by sharing their image on a global platform.
Dahir called on people across political lines to stand together and defend children from public targeting.
The criticism also comes after Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said this week that a small number of Somali youths involved in gangs were responsible for more than a dozen homicides in the metro area.
Abdisalam Adam, principal at East African Elementary Magnet School in St. Paul, warned against linking ethnicity or culture to crime.
“Lumping the Somali community together and naming everything Somali is a big problem that we need to call out,” Adam said.
Minneapolis City Council Vice President Jamal Osman also criticized Fletcher’s remarks Tuesday, calling them disappointing.
“Somali youth deserve investment, dignity, opportunity and respect — not public officials using their platform to stereotype them,” Osman said.
Community leaders said Trump has repeatedly targeted Somali immigrants and Somalia during his second administration through public remarks and policy actions. They said his rhetoric has contributed to an increasingly hostile climate for Somali and Muslim communities in Minnesota.
