Hateful emails and phone calls targeted a Minnesota school serving Somali families after President Donald Trump shared a video of its kindergartners on Truth Social this week, an episode that many Somali Americans see as an escalation of a sustained campaign of political and rhetorical attacks during Trump’s second term, community leaders said.
On Wednesday, Trump reposted a video from a kindergarten graduation ceremony at Gateway STEM Academy, a K-8 charter school in St. Paul. In the clip, children wearing blue graduation gowns, including girls wearing hijabs beneath their mortarboards, sing in Somali as they celebrate the end of the school year.
Trump amplified another user’s caption: “Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
The faces of the young children were clearly visible in the video shared with Trump’s 12.9 million followers. Members of the Somali community said that exposure could open the door to attacks on some of the community’s most vulnerable members. The replies to Trump’s post quickly filled with anti-Muslim invective, including one user who called the children “future terrorists.”
For many Minnesotans of Somali descent, the post was the latest salvo in a monthslong campaign in which Trump has repeatedly singled them out while his administration has mounted an aggressive immigration and law enforcement operation in the Twin Cities.
“The first term of Donald Trump was a cakewalk compared to this,” said Suleiman Adan, deputy executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Minnesota chapter. “In the first term, you saw attacks on equality, belonging, and justice. In the second term, it’s an attack on basic human dignity. Right now, the crosshairs are on the Somali community.”
Adan said he and other advocates had been in contact with officials at the school, who told them they have been contending with hateful emails, phone calls, and social media posts.
Reached Friday, the White House did not directly address questions about the president’s decision to share the video, the harassment the school says followed, or concerns about posting identifiable children to millions of followers.
“President Trump is right,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said. “Aliens who come to our country, complain about how much they hate America, fail to contribute to our economy, rip off Americans, and refuse to assimilate into our society should not be here.”
The ceremony featured in Trump’s post took place on the last day of school for the rising first-graders, who have not been back to the building since, Adan said.
The school is mulling safety measures for when classes restart. The incident has also increased concern around Saturday schools that teach Somali language and culture.
Gateway STEM Academy’s parent handbook describes the school as a STEM-focused charter that seeks to “embrace” students’ cultural backgrounds and encourages family participation in cultural celebrations, while emphasizing academic rigor, attendance, and discipline. It also offers Arabic among its electives alongside science, technology, and math programming.
The video featured in the social media post began as a recording of an ordinary school celebration before ricocheting through the online right. The song, in Somali, is benign: it speaks of the pride of being a student, the joy of reaching a milestone, and hopes for continued success, said Malika Dahir, the executive director of Reviving the Islamic Sisterhood for Empowerment.
Members of the Somali community routinely stream milestone moments for friends and relatives who live in other countries or states, Dahir added.
“There isn’t a graduation or a wedding that isn’t livestreamed,” she said. “We share these online, because family members are all over the world. It’s a way to share momentous occasions. To feel like now these moments might be weaponized, there’s just a sense of loss, like our joy has been stolen.”
The video was circulated by End Wokeness, an influential conservative social media account, with a caption drawing attention to the girls’ hijabs. Trump reposted the clip, first without explanation and later with the account’s caption attached.
The post was consistent with Trump’s frequent use of Truth Social to share racially charged, often inflammatory, imagery. Earlier this year, his account posted a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, which was deleted after bipartisan condemnation. He later shared a doctored image of the Obamas beside a graffiti-covered Air Force One bearing “BLM” and Arabic writing.
Minnesota is home to roughly 80,000 people of Somali descent, the largest Somali community in the United States. Trump has repeatedly singled out Somali immigrants during his second term, seizing on a series of sprawling fraud investigations involving state and federal social-service programs. Many of those charged are Somali or Somali American.
The largest fraud allegation centered on a nonprofit whose operators and affiliates were accused of diverting about $250 million from a federally funded child-nutrition program. Federal prosecutors have also brought separate cases involving programs intended to provide housing assistance to vulnerable adults and therapy for children with autism. Prosecutors say defendants used some of the money to buy cars, real estate, and other personal luxuries.
Trump has used the scandals to justify large-scale federal intervention in Minnesota, dispatching thousands of immigration officers to the Twin Cities in an operation that extended well beyond the people accused of fraud. The deployment prompted weeks of protests and confrontations between agents and residents.
During the operation, federal officers fatally shot Renée Good and Alex Pretti, both 37-year-old U.S. citizens, in separate encounters that were captured on video and became flash points in the national debate over Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The administration subsequently changed leadership of the operation and began drawing down the federal presence. In February, border czar Tom Homan announced that 700 officers would leave Minnesota, although he attributed the withdrawal to increased cooperation from state and local authorities rather than directly to the shootings.
