Minneapolis police chief apologizes as Somali community faces backlash

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara has apologized to the Somali community for a comment he made associating “East African children” with crime.

“The Somali community here in Minneapolis has welcomed me and shown me love, and I appreciate it,” O’Hara said during a news conference Thursday. “Over the past three years, we have worked together to try to solve some of the most serious problems we face in our community.”

“We sometimes have to be honest with the problems that we have in our community, and we need our community to help us solve these problems together because it’s real and it’s serious. At the same time, if people took something that I said out of context in a way that caused harm, I apologize and I’m sorry for that because that’s not my intention at all,” O’Hara added.

In an interview with WCCO earlier this month, O’Hara was talking about a deadly Halloween shooting as well as the juvenile crime plaguing the city when he made the comment. Alpha News reported that the Dinkytown area, where the shooting occurred, has been the scene of a spate of crimes, including assaults, robberies, shootings and carjackings.

TRUMP ENDS DEPORTATION PROTECTIONS FOR SOMALIAN NATIONALS LIVING IN MINNESOTA ‘EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY’

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara speaks during a press conference regarding the Annunciation Church shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota on August 28, 2025. (Tim Evans/Reuters)

During the interview, he said the youths who committed the crimes were not “poor kids from Minneapolis” but rather out-of-town kids who take “mom’s Mercedes-Benz to Dinkytown, and they don’t know where they are.”

“Groups of children, groups of children from East Africa who come from surrounding communities and not just from one community, all over the place,” O’Hara told WCCO.

After the interview, a petition on Change.org demanded an apology from O’Hara, saying that the East African community in Minneapolis “already has borne the brunt of unjust oversight for years” and that the leader’s comment would “increase that burden.”

Minneapolis’ Somali community has come under national scrutiny in recent days after an explosive report revealed a series of alleged financial schemes that resulted in terrorists obtaining taxpayer money. Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo of the Manhattan Institute discovered that Al-Shabaab, a terrorist organization linked to Al-Qaeda in Somalia, received funds that could be traced back to Minnesota.

“Every bit of economic activity, in the Twin Cities, in America, throughout Western Europe, wherever Somalis are concentrated, every penny sent back to Somalia benefits Al-Shabaab in one way or another,” a former official who worked in the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task Force told Thorpe and Rufo.

Women walk along a tree-lined street in Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, home to one of the largest Somali communities in the United States. (Michael Dorgan/Fox News Digital)

Following this report, President Donald Trump announced that he was ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somalis in Minnesota.

THE Secretary of Homeland Security may designate a country for TPS if its nationals cannot return safely or if the country “is unable to adequately manage the return of its nationals.” Countries currently under TPS are Burma, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Lebanon, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela and Yemen.

“Minnesota, under the leadership of Governor Waltz, is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity. As President of the United States, I am ending, effective immediately, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for Somalis in Minnesota. Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of this great state, and BILLIONS of dollars are missing. Send them back where they came from. It’s OVER!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Rufo, one of the authors of the explosive report, said Trump’s announcement was a “good start” but there was still work to be done.

“Canceling TPS for Somalis in Minnesota is a good start. Next: review all asylum, refugee, and citizenship applications for any suspicion of fraud or technical errors; then initiate mass denaturalizations and deportations to the furthest limits of the law. They need to come home.” Rufo wrote on.

Women walk along a tree-lined street in Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, home to one of the largest Somali communities in the United States. (Michael Dorgan/Fox News Digital)

MINNESOTA TAXPAYER DOLLARS TOWARDS AL-SHABAAB TERROR GROUP, REPORT ALLES

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., who praised Trump’s decision, wrote a letter Friday to U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Daniel Rosen demanding an investigation. The letter was also signed by Emmer’s fellow Minnesota Republicans, Rep. Pete Stauber, Rep. Michelle Fischbach and Rep. Brad Finstad.

“Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest in the country, is alleged to have sent millions of people back to Somalia through the hawala network, an informal money trafficking network known for funneling its funds into terrorist networks, and in this case, Al-Shabaab,” the letter reads.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) speaks during a press conference with members of the Republican Study Committee and other members of the House Republican leadership on the 28th day of the government shutdown in Washington, DC, October 28, 2025. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)

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Lawmakers cited the various cases involving members of the Somali community, including the Feeding our Future fraud program, fraud in the Housing Stabilization Services program, the Child Care Assistance Program and the Minnesota Intensive Early Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program.

“It is bad enough that these individuals are defrauding our state, depriving children and the most vulnerable of services and money, but now there is good reason to believe that Minnesota taxpayer dollars are going directly into the hands of terrorists. These new allegations represent not only a serious betrayal of taxpayer trust, but also a serious threat to our national security,” the letter said.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Walz’s office for comment.