Minnesota and its Somali immigrant community have become the latest target of President Donald Trump, in what has become a pattern of escalating pressure against Democratic-led cities and states across the U.S.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that ICE would focus on undocumented members of the Twin Cities Somali community with an intensive immigration enforcement operation.

Mayor Jacob Frey and other Minneapolis leaders were planning an afternoon news conference to address the mounting tensions.

In Minneapolis, activists and community leaders traded reports of federal law enforcement activity — potentially involving immigration — although the nature of any operations were unclear Tuesday morning.

The focus comes after Trump and members of his cabinet highlighted cases where some members of Minnesota’s Somali-American community defrauded state government programs. Federal prosecutors say fraudsters stole more than $1 billion from state-run programs in recent years. Most of the several dozen people charged, convicted and sentenced in those schemes are of East African descent, although most are American citizens.

At a news conference Tuesday, DFL Gov. Tim Walz, who is widely seen as a political foe to the president, said it was clear the administration was turning up the pressure on Minnesota and would “keep piling things on.”

“My expectation is today, we will probably see an increased presence of immigration folks in our city,” Walz said. “We will probably see the president threaten to use National Guard again. This is a president in spiral doing nothing to make life cheaper for Minnesotans or Americans, and we understand who he’s targeting.”

Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2024, added that “demonizing an entire population” is not the way to handle concerns about fraud.

Most of Minnesota’s 80,000-strong Somali community have gone from refugees to business people through honest work, community leaders say.

In a statement Tuesday, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said “what makes someone a target of ICE is not their race or ethnicity, but the fact that they are in the country illegally.”

“We do not discuss future or potential operations,” she said.

Several other federal agencies have also recently announced plans to investigate Minnesota.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Monday night he directed federal authorities to investigate claims that money stolen by fraudsters in Minnesota was redirected to the terrorist organization al-Shabab.

The investigation comes after a report published by City Journal, a conservative magazine run by the Manhattan Institute, made an alarming claim that “the largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.”

There is little evidence to support the claim that stolen taxpayer funds have been funneled to terrorist groups. When the claim was first made by local television news outlet Fox9 in 2018, Minnesota’s nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor investigated and concluded it couldn’t substantiate the allegation.

Additionally, former U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Andy Luger told the Star Tribune last week that the 70 defendants his office prosecuted in the Feeding Our Future fraud case “were looking to get rich, not fund overseas terrorism.”

Walz said Tuesday that he welcomes a federal investigation. But he said his administration has not seen any evidence to support the claim of stolen money going to terrorist groups.

Republicans in the Minnesota Senate also welcomed the federal investigation, saying in a statement Tuesday that it’s “something Governor Walz has never been willing to do himself.”

“Whether fraud was being used for personal enrichment, or being siphoned by terrorist organizations overseas, the reality is that no other state has seen these brazen fraud schemes stealing more than a billion dollars from public funds,” said Sens. Jordan Rasmusson, R-Fergus Falls, and Paul Utke, R-Park Rapids.

Kelly Loeffler, administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, said in a social media post Tuesday morning that the SBA also will investigate “the network of Somali organizations and executives implicated in these schemes.”

“Numerous individuals and nonprofits indicted in the $1 billion Minnesota COVID fraud scandal, including Feeding Our Future, received SBA PPP loans in addition to other state and federal funding,” she said.

In another salvo fired at Minnesota, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called on the Walz administration to revoke nondomiciled commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) or risk losing as much as $30.4 million in federal highway funding.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s threat comes after Duffy said the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration found that one-third of Minnesota’s nondomiciled CDLs were issued illegally. CDLs are required to operate large and heavy vehicles; nondomiciled CDLs are issued to drivers who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

Asked about the transportation secretary’s threat Tuesday, Walz said, “we are following the law exactly as it’s written, exactly as we implemented it for decades.”

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Nathaniel Minor and Sydney Kashiwagi of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this report.

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