Donald J. Trump and his MAGA movement are obsessed—pathologically so—with one woman: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. The evidence is not subtext; it is screamed at rallies where crowds chant “Send her back!” following his lead. It is in Trump’s own words, calling her “garbage” and her native Somalia a “filthy, dirty, disgusting” country. Omar herself has described this relentless focus as a “weird” and “creepy” obsession.
But why? Not because she commands armies or controls institutions. She doesn’t. And not because she is uniquely radical in a Congress stuffed with ideological extremes. She isn’t.
It is because she represents what MAGA fears most: a minority that did not arrive quietly, assimilate on their terms, or ask for permission to succeed. She embodies a community that, in a single generation, has gone from refugee resettlement to electing representatives to a city council, a state legislature, and the United States Congress—herself being the historic first.
This rapid ascent shatters a foundational nativist myth. To ideologues like Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller—whose arguments for immigration policy seek a return to 1920s-style racial quotas—groups from what he calls “third world countries” like Somalia were destined to “replicate the conditions they left.” They were meant to be permanent guests, not architects of policy.
Ilhan Omar proved them wrong. And the backlash is not merely rhetorical; it is operational. Following Trump’s inflammatory comments, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched operations targeting undocumented immigrants in the Twin Cities’ Somali community, leading to what Omar decried as the racial profiling of U.S. citizens. The administration also moved to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somalis. The message is clear: rhetoric fuels policy, and fear justifies enforcement.
This pattern is driven by a single ideological engine: the Great Replacement Theory. This paranoid, racist belief that “real Americans” are being demographically and culturally replaced is now mainstream on the American right. Miller’s rhetoric “borrow[s], at least in spirit” from this conspiracy theory, warning of “voting blocs loyal to foreign interests” and “civilizational erasure.” Omar has stated that Miller “regularly echoes” this toxic theory. When arguments fail, identity is weaponized. Hence the relentless, false claims that she is in the country illegally or committed marriage fraud—the oldest tricks in the nativist handbook, designed to permanently label someone as “other.”
What truly terrifies Trumpism, then, is not Ilhan Omar the individual, but Ilhan Omar the symbol: a Black, Muslim, refugee woman who punctures their mythology. She speaks without apology, wins elections without their blessing, and, most unforgivably, defines her own American story. She calls her journey the realization of the American Dream, inspired by her grandfather’s faith in a country “where you can eventually become American.” She draws a line between the hate from official Washington and the “real America” that welcomed her.
In doing so, she holds up a mirror to America’s unresolved anxieties. She notes that this rhetoric “reminds of the way the Nazis described Jewish people in Germany,” placing it in the brutal continuum of American history—where Irish Catholics were depicted as vermin, Italians were lynched, and Japanese Americans were interned. Every non-Anglo-Saxon group has been attacked until it organized, resisted, and forced recognition.
The lesson for Somalis—and for all targeted minorities—is stark and non-negotiable: politics is not a spectator sport. Representation is not gifted. It is seized. Rights are protected not by silence but by numbers, discipline, and relentless civic engagement.
Ilhan Omar is not the problem. She is the warning of the future MAGA fears, where the marginalized claims power and refuses to be invisible. But that future is already here with votes, organisations, and successive winnings at all levels and fields of public life.
Warsame Policy & Media Network (WAPMEN) 