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The men started showing up at around 6am in late December.
In their cars, they circled the 161 Child Care facility in Columbus, before parking at the front of the building. Then they sat in their cars, opening their windows enough to tell the Somali Americans who own the daycare: “We’re exposing all of you. Every single one of you, you’re all going back.”
Then in the early hours of New Year’s Day, there was a break-in at the daycare.
“It was heart-breaking to me,” said Abukar Mohammed, a part-owner of the business. “I never thought that in America there would be racial things, that this could happen in America. I was shocked.”
Last December, Donald Trump repeatedly used racist language to attack the Somali American community, claiming “the Somalis are ripping off the country.”
Then days later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched “Operation Buckeye” in what it called an effort to target “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Columbus and throughout Ohio”.
What’s followed for many Columbus-based Somali Americans, and the wider immigrant community, has been months of unease and fear.
ICE agents have been turning up in cars around Somali-owned businesses and schools that teach children from immigrant backgrounds. Rightwing so-called “influencers”, including leaders at Turning Point USA, have followed suit.
Since then, Somali-owned businesses have struggled to attract customers and schools have closed due to low attendance fueled by the presence of federal agents and anti-immigrant provocateurs.
Today, the Somali community in Columbus, which numbers around 60,000 people, is still reeling from the fallout.
“Before this happened, I thought the president was going to be a good president,” said Mohammed. “I’m scared to go outside. They drive around, they cuss, they say bad stuff.”
The influencers claimed that daycare and other childcare facilities run by Somali Americans in Columbus, as in Minneapolis, are running fraudulent facilities that are misusing government funds. The state of Ohio contributes to the funding of around 5,200 childcare facilities.
A statement from Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, in December highlighted that the department of children and youth had received tips from the public that resulted in 12 programs, or .2% of state-funded facilities across the state, being shut down.
While the 161 Child Care facility Mohammed co-owns passed inspections by the state of Ohio last fall, it was not open when the intimidation campaign fueled by Trump’s comments started.
Unlike the Somali community in Minnesota, which enjoys broad support from the state’s Democratic-led government, in Ohio, rightwing politicians have targeted it and other immigrant communities. Two Republican representatives in Ohio have proposed a bill to introduce a law that would see recording equipment installed at all child and daycare facilities that receive funding from the state.
Recently, Ohio’s legislature has issued a series of proposals that would compel law enforcement to cooperate with ICE agents. By contrast, the Columbus city council passed legislation on 23 February that bans local law enforcement from carrying out federal immigration enforcement and city employees from ICE and US border control without prior council approval.
“Our community works hard, follows regulations and values education,” said Kawther Musa, a community relations officer for the city of Columbus, who left Somalia at the age of 15.
“But unfortunately, when communities grow and become visible, they sometimes face backlash. Hate speech and cyber harassment should be investigated seriously. At the same time, leaders must be careful not to inflame tensions.”
The Somali community in Columbus emerged after tens of thousands of refugees fled war and unrest in the east African country in the 1990s. Today, many work in healthcare and at distribution centers across central Ohio and own an estimated 500 businesses concentrated north of downtown Columbus along Cleveland Avenue, said Hassan Omar of the Somali Community Association of Ohio, who came to the Ohio capital in 1998.
But, Omar, said it’s not only daycare and childcare facilities in Columbus that have been targeted. He says he has received death threats and other racist messages to his voicemail in recent weeks.
“[The called me] ‘motherfucker, go back to Somalia,’ I don’t know how they got my cell number,” he said. “That’s not normal.”
The organization’s office, located next to a dated strip mall, has also been targeted by rightwing influencers pointing their phones at the door of the association, which provides social services to the local Somali community.
“He was standing all day, in front of the door, taking pictures,” said Omar of one incident.
More troubling, he said, is the fate of the estimated 2,500 Somali nationals in the US under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which is set to end on 17 March.
“TPS for Somalis was enacted in 1991,” he says. “So imagine somebody who lived here for 36 or 37 years [and now] has to go back.”
The end of TPS for Somalis is happening at a time when the World Food Programme says it may be forced to end emergency food aid in Somalia due to a lack of United Nations funding.
The World Bank ranks Somalia among the poorest countries in the world per gross domestic product and more than 6.5 million people are facing an acute hunger crisis in the east African country.
Moreover, the US department of state has issued a “do not travel” warning to Somalia due to “crime, terrorism, civil unrest” among other security-related issues. The Trump administration is ending TPS for Somalis despite the ongoing threat presented by terrorist group al-Shabaab, which controls much of southern Somalia and which was the subject of US military airstrikes in the country last May.
Mohammed, who came to the US in the early 2000s via South Africa after fleeing the war in Somalia, said he has had to install a new security system at the childcare center.
“When I tried to leave, people outside would say things like, ‘you bought your clothes with our money,’” he says.
What’s more, he blames the presence of unidentified people amassing in the parking lot for a shortage of customers.
“I was already struggling financially to open this daycare.”
