History of Somalis in Minneapolis–Saint Paul

Based on Wikipedia: History of Somalis in Minneapolis–Saint Paul

The Unlikely Capital of Somali America

If you had to guess which American city hosts the largest Somali population outside of Africa, you might think of New York, with its long history as an immigrant gateway. Or maybe Los Angeles, with its sprawling diversity. You would be wrong.

It's Minneapolis.

The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota—a place known for brutal winters, Scandinavian heritage, and a peculiar fondness for hot dish casseroles—has become home to approximately 94,000 people who speak Somali at home. By 2018, roughly 43,000 Minnesota residents had been born in Somalia itself, making this frigid corner of the upper Midwest the beating heart of the Somali diaspora in the United States.

How did this happen? The answer involves civil war, meatpacking plants, generous social services, Lutheran churches, and something called secondary migration. It's a story that reveals as much about America's patchwork immigration system as it does about the resilience of displaced people seeking to rebuild their lives.

When Somalia Collapsed

To understand why Somalis came to Minneapolis, you first need to understand why they left Somalia.

In 1991, the Somali government collapsed. This wasn't a mere change of leadership or political transition. The entire state apparatus disintegrated. President Siad Barre, who had ruled through a combination of socialist rhetoric and clan manipulation for over two decades, was overthrown. What followed was not liberation but chaos.

Various clan militias carved the country into competing fiefdoms. Mogadishu, the capital, became a war zone where different factions fought block by block. The economy evaporated. The judicial system vanished. Healthcare and education ceased to exist in any organized form. By 1992, the violence had combined with drought to create a famine that killed an estimated 300,000 people.

Millions fled.

Some went to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, settling in vast refugee camps that exist to this day. Others made their way to the Gulf states, Europe, or eventually, the United States. The Somali civil war created one of the largest refugee crises of the late twentieth century, scattering a tight-knit nomadic culture across every continent.

Why Minnesota?

The first Somalis arrived in the Twin Cities in the early 1990s, but the initial trickle became a steady stream through the work of voluntary agencies. Organizations like Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota and Catholic Charities had decades of experience resettling refugees—Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s, Hmong highlanders in the 1980s—and they had the infrastructure to welcome newcomers.

These faith-based groups didn't just provide housing. They offered the entire scaffolding of a new life: help with paperwork, English classes, job placement, cultural orientation. When a Somali family arrived at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, confused and exhausted after a journey that might have taken years through multiple refugee camps, someone was there to meet them.

But charitable organizations weren't the only draw.

Minnesota had jobs. Specifically, meatpacking jobs. The massive processing plants scattered across the upper Midwest needed workers willing to do difficult, dangerous, and poorly paid labor on the cutting floor. They found willing hands among refugees who had survived far worse conditions. The work was brutal, but it was work.

The state also had a reputation—deserved or not—for generous public assistance programs. Minnesota's social safety net was more robust than those of many other states, offering better healthcare access, more educational support, and stronger community services. Whether this reputation was accurate in the details mattered less than the perception among refugees comparing destinations.

Word travels fast in diaspora communities. When the first Somali arrivals found stable employment and helpful social services, they told their relatives still in refugee camps or recently settled elsewhere. This sparked what demographers call secondary migration—the movement of refugees from their initial resettlement location to somewhere they've heard is better.

The Numbers Tell the Story

Between 1979 and 2017, Minnesota received 23,915 Somali refugees directly through the official resettlement system, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. That's a substantial number, but it doesn't tell the whole story.

Secondary migration nearly doubled the population. Between 2010 and 2016 alone, Minnesota received 3,740 documented secondary arrivals—Somalis who had initially been placed in states like New York or Texas but decided to relocate to Minnesota after hearing about the opportunities there. They settled primarily in Hennepin County, which contains Minneapolis, as well as Stearns and Kandiyohi counties further west.

These secondary migrants weren't fleeing persecution or war. They were making an economic calculation, choosing to join an established community that could help them find jobs, practice their faith, and raise their children among people who shared their language and culture.

The result was concentration. While Somalis live throughout the Twin Cities metropolitan area, many cluster in specific neighborhoods. The Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, a dense collection of high-rise apartments near downtown, became particularly associated with new arrivals. It earned the nickname "Little Mogadishu."

But this clustering isn't permanent. As Somali families establish themselves economically, many follow the classic immigrant trajectory of moving to the suburbs. Professionals seek quiet neighborhoods with good schools, less crime, and more space. The inner city serves as a landing zone; the suburbs become permanent destinations.

Building an Economy from Scratch

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Somali community in Minnesota is how quickly it developed economic infrastructure.

By 2006—just fifteen years after the first significant arrivals—Somalis in Minnesota accounted for between $164 million and $494 million in purchasing power and owned an estimated 600 businesses. That's an extraordinary rate of entrepreneurship for a refugee community starting from essentially nothing.

The most visible manifestation of this economic vitality is the Somali mall. The most famous is Karmel Mall, a shopping center in Minneapolis that functions as a community hub. Walk inside and you'll find stalls selling halal meat butchered according to Islamic law, leather goods, clothing for men and women in traditional and Western styles, and gold jewelry.

You'll also find hawala offices. Hawala is an informal money transfer system that predates modern banking, operating on trust and a network of brokers rather than electronic transfers. For Somalis sending money home to relatives in a country without a functioning banking system, hawala was essential. These offices handle remittances—money sent to family members abroad—that form a crucial lifeline for many Somali families.

This connection to the homeland never severed. Somalis in Minnesota continued to feel responsible for extended family members left behind, sending regular payments that covered everything from school fees to medical bills to basic survival during lean times. The Money Remittances Improvement Act, passed by Congress, made these transfers easier to conduct legally.

The Complicated Question of Return

Around 2012, something unexpected began to happen. The security situation in Somalia started to improve. The internationally-backed government, while still weak, began establishing control over Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab, the militant group that had controlled much of southern Somalia, was pushed out of the capital.

Some Somali-Americans began going home.

Not all of them, and not permanently. But a significant number of people who had built lives in Minnesota started investing in Somalia. They participated in the reconstruction process, renovating schools, hospitals, and roads. They bought property in Mogadishu's recovering real estate market. They started businesses. They helped propel the capital's economic recovery.

This reverse migration complicates the simple narrative of refugees fleeing a failed state. Many Somali-Americans maintain dual identities, with one foot in each country, moving between Minneapolis and Mogadishu as circumstances require.

A small number, however, traveled to Somalia for darker purposes. Federal prosecutors have sought and sometimes convicted Somali-Americans for allegedly providing material support to Al-Shabaab or, later, the Islamic State. These cases attracted enormous attention and raised difficult questions about radicalization in refugee communities.

By late 2013, according to intelligence officials, fewer expatriates were joining militant groups. The vast majority of Somali-Americans who returned to Somalia did so for entirely legitimate reasons—investment, family connections, or patriotic desire to help rebuild their homeland. But the prosecutions left scars on community trust and complicated relationships with law enforcement.

Political Power and Representation

The Somali community in Minnesota didn't just build businesses. It built political power.

A Somali American Caucus formed within the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which is what Minnesotans call their state's Democratic Party. Somalis also participated in Republican politics, with a Somali American chairing the Republican Party's Immigrant Relations Committee as early as 2012.

But the most significant breakthrough came in 2018, when Ilhan Omar won election to the United States House of Representatives from Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District. Omar, who came to the United States as a child refugee, became the first Somali-American ever elected to Congress and one of the first two Muslim women to serve in that body.

Her election wasn't isolated. The Minnesota State Legislature now includes multiple Somali-American members: Mohamud Noor, Hodan Hassan, Samakab Hussein, and Anquam Mahamoud in the House of Representatives, and Omar Fateh in the State Senate. This representation would have been unimaginable in the early 1990s, when the community was just beginning to form.

Politically, Somali-Americans have historically leaned heavily Democratic. In 2020, Joe Biden won 91 percent of the vote in the Cedar-Riverside precinct—about as close to unanimous support as you'll find in American politics.

But something shifted between 2020 and 2024. When Kamala Harris ran for president, her support in Cedar-Riverside dropped by 14 percentage points compared to Biden's performance four years earlier. She still won the precinct, but the decline was striking.

Analysts attribute this shift to several factors. Many in the Somali community hold conservative views on social issues, particularly regarding gender identity and LGBTQ rights, that conflict with the Democratic Party's increasingly progressive positions. The Biden administration's handling of the war in Gaza also alienated some Muslim voters who felt the United States was too supportive of Israel's military campaign.

A Scandal That Shook the Community

In 2016, a woman named Aimee Bock founded a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future. Its stated mission was simple: provide meals to children in need. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when schools closed and children lost access to free lunch programs, this seemed like essential work.

It was, in fact, one of the largest pandemic fraud schemes in American history.

According to federal prosecutors, Feeding Our Future claimed to distribute many thousands of meals to schoolchildren but actually stole hundreds of millions of dollars while providing few or no meals at most of its locations. The organization was shut down following FBI raids in 2022, and dozens of people were indicted.

Most—though not all—of those charged were members of Minnesota's Somali American community, whether first-generation immigrants or native-born citizens. Bock herself, a white woman, accused state agencies of discriminating against the Somali community, suggesting that fears of appearing racist had prevented proper oversight.

This accusation created painful divisions. Kayseh Magan, a Somali-American investigator for the Minnesota Attorney General's office, suggested that accusations of racism against state agencies had indeed created hesitancy in taking action against the organization. He argued that the Somali American community's close social cohesion—normally a strength—had created a disconnect between fraudulent activity and public attention.

Hamse Warfa, a Somali-American former state and federal official, pushed back against any attempt to scapegoat the entire community for the actions of individuals. He argued in the Star Tribune that painting all Somali-Americans with the brush of this scandal would be unjust.

The case continues to reverberate. President Donald Trump cited the Feeding Our Future fraud as a reason to cut off Temporary Protected Status for some Somali refugees in Minnesota, even though the fraud involved primarily people who had legal permanent residence or citizenship rather than those with temporary protection.

A Community Within a Community

What holds a diaspora community together when it's scattered across a metropolitan area of three million people?

For Somalis in Minnesota, the answer is organizations. The Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota and the Somali American Parent Association, among others, provide social services that help newcomers and established residents alike. They offer English as a Second Language classes, job placement assistance, legal advocacy, and union services.

This support system reflects a cultural value sometimes called collective responsibility. In traditional Somali society, which was organized around clan structures and nomadic pastoralism, individual success was inseparable from community obligation. You were expected to help relatives and clan-mates, and they were expected to help you. This ethic survived the journey to Minnesota.

The community also maintains connections to the homeland in formal ways. In October 2014, Minneapolis became the sister city of Bosaso, the third-largest city in Somalia and the commercial capital of the Puntland region in the country's northeast.

Notable Figures

The Somali community in Minnesota has produced a remarkable array of public figures.

Some came with established reputations. Abdirizak Haji Hussein, who died in Minnesota in 2014, had served as Prime Minister of Somalia from 1964 to 1968—before the country's long descent into chaos. Nuruddin Farah, considered one of Africa's greatest living novelists, has connections to the community. Saado Ali Warsame, the beloved singer-songwriter, lived in Minnesota until her death in 2014.

Others built their reputations in America. Hussein Samatar became such an influential community leader—as a politician, banker, and organizer—that Minneapolis named a shared-use pathway near downtown "Samatar Crossing" in his honor in 2018. His legacy represents what integration can look like: deep roots in the Somali community combined with civic contributions recognized by the broader city.

The younger generation includes Isra Hirsi, born in 2003, who became a prominent climate change activist and cofounder of the U.S. Youth Climate Strike while still a teenager. She happens to be Ilhan Omar's daughter, but has built her own following around environmental justice.

The Future Is Unwritten

The story of Somalis in Minneapolis is barely three decades old. That's less than a single generation in the long sweep of immigration history.

The German and Scandinavian immigrants who gave Minnesota its cultural character arrived in the mid-nineteenth century. They've had 170 years to shape the state's identity. The Hmong community, another major refugee population in Minnesota, has been there since the late 1970s—about fifty years. The Somali community is still young.

What will it look like in another generation? The Cedar-Riverside high-rises will still house newcomers, but their children and grandchildren may be scattered across the suburbs and exurbs, speaking English at home and Somali only with grandparents. The businesses of Karmel Mall may give way to second-generation professionals—doctors, lawyers, engineers, tech workers.

Or the community might maintain its cohesion, preserving language and culture more successfully than other immigrant groups have managed. The strong organizational infrastructure and close family ties might resist the assimilating pressures that have dissolved other ethnic communities into generic American identity.

Either outcome—or something in between—will be shaped by forces no one can predict. The security situation in Somalia, which has improved dramatically since 2012, could deteriorate again, sending new waves of refugees. American immigration policy could tighten further, cutting off the flow. Climate change could make the Horn of Africa uninhabitable, creating pressures that dwarf anything seen so far.

What's certain is that the Somali community has already transformed Minneapolis in ways that would have been unimaginable in 1990. A city of Scandinavian reserve now hosts one of the most vibrant African communities in North America. The meatpacking plants that drew the first arrivals have given way to Somali-owned businesses, elected officials, and cultural institutions. The trajectory from refugee camp to Congress took less than thirty years.

That story is still being written.