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By Max Towey

We pulled into the parking lot behind the Soma Grill & Deli at 10 AM on a rainy Monday morning. Seeing our camera, a man wearing a sweatsuit ran up to us.

“Get me, get me, get me, I’m the motherf*****g news today. We out here in Minneapolis aka Murderapolis, b***h!”

He put down the plastic bag in his right hand and took a puff of the blunt in his left. We asked him what was going on, and he responded, “So look, we got a motherf*****g fire going up. But it's all good, though, because everybody got out safe.” 

He wasn’t lying about a fire: Firefighters had forced us into the parking lot after cordoning off the main strip due to a small fire in the wooden building before us. So we got out of the car and dapped up the man who greeted us. His name was Salim Mohamed, and he welcomed us to Cedar-Riverside in Minneapolis, the Somali capital of America.

“Minneapolis is a very complex place,” Salim told us. “It’s a very diverse culture, you know what I'm saying? And the Somalis, we on top, you know that.” He proceeded to speak to us in fluent Somali before sobering up as our conversation got more serious.

“I hate the people that are trying to label us as bad people. We're not bad people… We are Muslim first. Before Somali, we are Muslim. And the Somali people that are real Muslims are peaceful. Peaceful.”

Salim had been born in Kenya, where his parents moved after the Somali government collapsed in 1991. That led to a civil war that culminated with the Battle of Mogadishu – documented in the movie Black Hawk Down – and a famine.

In early 1993, the first wave of Somali refugees came to the US. Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Charities placed them in the Twin Cities. 

Minnesota was no stranger to welcoming refugees: In the late 70s and 80s, it welcomed Vietnam’s long-persecuted Hmong population, which now exceeds 70,000 in the Minneapolis metro area. Somalis were among the next groups to arrive in the Twin Cities. Today, around 90,000 live there, including Salim. 

Salim became serious as his story took a tragic turn. 

“I just did a year in prison for a murder I didn’t do in South Dakota,” he said. We Googled his name, and the top results confirmed his story: Salim had been convicted of a 2022 murder and served a year in prison before being exonerated. 

Once released, Salim moved to Cedar-Riverside in Minneapolis for its reputation as a Somali hub. He’s one of the many “secondary migrants” from Somalia to move to Minneapolis. Now there, he told us he’s trying to deepen his faith. He boasted that there were “three mosques in walking distance” from where we stood. I told him to keep fighting the good fight, and we said goodbye. Then we turned the corner – and ran into the “Zohran of the Midwest.”

If you haven’t seen a photo of Omar Fateh, then you’re probably not plugged into conservative X or YouTube.

The right treats Fateh as a symbol of the ills of mass migration. Some target him expressly for his looks and compare him to the “I am the captain now” Somali pirate from Captain Phillips. Others target him for his left-wing policies and controversial claims, which frequently go viral. 

In one viral clip from his campaign, Fateh referred to Somalia as “home” and made the case to Somali voters in Minneapolis that his election would help their home country. In another clip, he said that the “real threat [in America]” looks like his white Republican colleagues.

This fall, Fateh told an interviewer: “I don't believe there's any instance in which MPD should be collaborating with ICE.” Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller quote tweeted the clip and wrote, “What our ‘elites’ did to Minnesota is one of the great tragedies of recent history.” Conservative podcaster Matt Walsh tweeted, “I defy anyone to list even one way that the United States has benefited from Somalian immigration. Just one benefit. Go ahead.”

Fateh surged in the polls but ended up losing to incumbent Democratic mayor Jacob Frey. Nevertheless, his progressive brand will surely live on. 

We saw Fateh as he rushed to the scene of the nearby fire, which at that point had been extinguished. Next to him was a campaign staffer named Raquel who had reddish purple hair and looked straight out of a slam poetry cafe in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Her role made sense: Fateh couldn’t win the mayoral race purely on a Somali-focused campaign – he needed an alliance with other young progressives. It’s that same alliance that brought Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to Congress in 2018 and has made her a progressive leader ever since. 

This alliance can be thorny: One Fateh staffer said in a December 2023 panel about October 7, “We as Americans, people who live in the imperial core, our job is to stand in unconditional solidarity with those resisting oppression.” Another staffer shared a post calling reports of rape on October 7 “propaganda” and said, “Zionists should f**k off.” The post has since been deleted.

When we saw Fateh, we were in the middle of a conversation with the facilities manager of a predominantly Somali apartment complex. The man, an old bearded white Minnesotan, recounted how the neighborhood had changed.

“I mean, a lot of the businesses on the street here are gone. There's several bars that used to have live music, the last of which just closed a few weeks ago. And the Somali and East African people have been buying those buildings up for daycare centers, mosques, and various things. So the neighborhood's changed a lot, but I consider it an evolution,” he said.

He sought to dispel the fears circulating X, describing the Somalis as good, social people. He claimed that the towers – which used to house Vietnamese people – have little crime and that cities in red states are worse than Minneapolis.

When I approached Fateh, he was surprisingly soft-spoken and said he’d be glad to talk to us later. We asked if we could have ten minutes now, but he told us that he wanted to check on the fire first. I told him this wouldn’t be a “gotcha” interview and that the last mayoral candidate we interviewed was NYC Mayor Eric Adams. See, we’re good luck, Omar!

He told us he would do it, and Raquel gave me her number. But we could tell she wasn’t as bullish on the idea of a RocaNews interview: She looked at our Instagram page and scoffed. When we showed up at the campaign office later, five other staffers told us Fateh could no longer meet: “Our boss is very popular.”

That was but one of many nos we received that day. Between people who seemed skeptical of two white guys with a camera, and immigrants who feared blowback for their statements or didn’t speak English, it wasn’t an easy place to have a conversation. 

But then we met Mohamed Dini – a Minneapolis resident and member of Somalia’s parliament. 

We sat down with Dini at the television studio of United Somali TV, which, despite having 85,000 YouTube subscribers and 100,000 Facebook followers, is only the second-largest Minnesota-based Somali media company.

We wanted to know how Dini and members of his community felt about America. Politicians like Fateh and Rep. Ilhan Omar often go viral for statements deemed anti-white or anti-American. What did Mr. Dini think?

“We love this great nation,” he said. “We are taxpayers. Our children, when they grow up, will defend this great nation… and will take a gun to defend American values and the national interests of the United States.”

He continued:

He also highlighted America’s military help:

Dini waxed poetic about our country. So why do people doubt Somalis’ patriotism? 

Enter, Ilhan Omar.

“Oh, we love her,” a Somali businesswoman told me of Omar. “She’s basically what I want to be.”

We were speaking at the woman’s store in Karmel Mall, the largest Somali mall in the country and home to hundreds of Somali shops. The woman had introduced herself as what sounded like “Bahaja Ali,” but I was too ashamed to ask her to confirm it a third time.

Ali ran a business that helped Somalis with both immigration paperwork and sending money back home. Businesses like hers were on every floor. As one teen told us, “Within our community, we usually send money back home to the less fortunate.” World Bank data says that remittances account for 17.5% of Somalia’s GDP.

“Everybody's just pursuing their American dream,” Ali said. “I don't think they're thinking of like, what America stands for, what America does, or what Americans don't do.”

Ali had come to Minnesota via Sweden and then Oregon. She said her shop was a testament to a unique part of Somali culture: That Somali women are highly entrepreneurial.

“[In this mall,] there are more than 600 businesses and 95% of those businesses are women businesses created by women,” she told us. “Somali women in the last 50 years are those who are working and building the country because the country has been destroyed many, many times all over again. And a lot of men have been lost. So women stepped up and built the country. And still we are doing the same thing.”

I mentioned Rep. Omar. She said, “We love her. She’s what every black Muslim hijabi woman wants to be.”

I asked Ali if there was pushback within the Somali community over Omar’s progressive views, including her support of the LGBTQ community. Ali said she doesn’t have any issue with her social views.

Among the larger community, though, there’s a split: Several Somalis told us off-camera they disagree with progressives on social issues. In 2023, Somali parents in the St. Louis Park Public School District outside Minneapolis rebelled against the school for the inclusion of literature promoting gender fluidity in its curricula. One parent, Fatuma Irshat, told the school board, “We believe that we have a sacred obligation to teach the principles of our faith to our children without being undermined by the schools.”

Another, Hodan Hassan, said: “We came to America because of its rich heritage of protecting religious liberty and the opportunity to raise our children in a place where they have access to success. We were shocked that our children were being taught material that violates our beliefs, but we’re grateful that the school has granted our opt-out requests.”

Among the material was the book Ho’onani: Hula Warrior, which says that kids can be something between a boy and a girl. One school board member, Sarah Davis, broke down in tears over this, saying that she “expects solidarity” from Muslims over the “queer community’s” support of the “marginalized Muslim community.”

The Somalis’ seeming isolation stuck out to me. In many places, including Dearborn, MI – the US’ only Arab-majority city – immigrant communities have seemed intensely patriotic, proud to be in America, and eager to assimilate. It was different in Minneapolis. 

“I think America is the one that encourages people to identify and segregate people and put people in different boxes,” Ali, the female entrepreneur, told us. “That’s what America stands for: Like everybody is segregated in their community. White people are with white people, Somali people are with Somali people. That’s what America is. You come here, you start your own community, you stay with your own community.”

She added, “People normally in America are not very fond of strangers. I think they just don’t want to speak with someone who doesn’t share the same beliefs.”

This doesn’t match what we’ve experienced elsewhere in the US, but it does align with some rhetoric from people like Rep. Omar, who in 2018 told Al Jazeera, “[The US] should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country.”

Earlier this year, in the wake of the military parade in DC, Omar said, “The US is turning into one of the worst countries when we see tanks rolling through our capital for a dictator’s ego.. I fled a country where this was normal, and I never thought I’d see America mimic those nightmares.” Separately, she told a group of Somalis, “Sleep in comfort knowing I am here to protect the interest of Somalia from inside the US system.” 

And back in 2012, she tweeted, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” 

All of these quotes have created an image of the Somalis as Somalia-first and unpatriotic, and our trip supported this view at times: In Karmel Mall, for example, we saw far more Somalia and Palestine flags than American flags. Walking the streets of Cedar-Riverside, we heard few conversations in English and observed virtually no assimilation. Ali herself told us she had “little interaction” with non-Somalis on a day-to-day basis. 

But Dini, the parliamentarian, disagrees: He sees a community that’s patriotic, entrepreneurial, and thoroughly American. The United Somali TV reporter who welcomed us chimed in and told us this:

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If you enjoyed this story, check out our full YouTube video from Minneapolis.