US President Donald Trump has said he does not want Somali immigrants in the US, telling reporters they should “go back to where they came from” and “their country is no good for a reason”.

“I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” he said during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Trump said the US would “go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country”.

His disparaging comments came as immigration authorities were reported to be planning an enforcement operation in Minnesota’s large Somali community.

In response, the prime minister of Somalia said he would not give Trump’s comments importance and suggested they should be ignored.

Officials in Minnesota have condemned the reported plan for an immigration enforcement operation, arguing it could unfairly sweep up American citizens who may appear to be from the East African nation.

Minneapolis and St Paul, which together are known as the Twin Cities, are home to one of the largest Somali communities in the world and the largest in the US.

The reported plan, and Trump’s comments, represent an intensification of the president’s recent attacks on Minnesota’s Somali community, whose decades-long protected status in the US he recently pledged to revoke, and its Democratic politicians.

Trump has also recently expanded his months-long immigration crackdown in the wake of last week’s shooting of two National Guard members in Washington DC, which was allegedly perpetrated by an Afghan who moved to the US. Trump did not refer to that incident while speaking about Somalis.

During his remarks, which came at the end of an hours-long televised cabinet meeting, Trump said: “I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, OK.

“Somebody will say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country.”

He also said: “With Somalia, which is barely a country, you know, they have no, they have no anything. They just run around killing each other. There’s no structure.”

He then turned to criticising Representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat and the first Somali-American to be elected to Congress with whom he has clashed repeatedly for a number of years.

“I always watch her,” Trump said, adding that Omar “hates everybody. And I think she’s an incompetent person”.

“His obsession with me is creepy,” Omar responded in a social media post. “I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been directed by the Trump administration to target undocumented Somali immigrants in the Twin Cities, a person familiar with the planning told the BBC’s US partner CBS News on Tuesday.

Hundreds of people are expected to be targeted when the operation begins this week, the official said. The New York Times first reported the operation.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, declined to comment on planned operations and denied that any people would be targeted based on race.

“Every day, ICE enforces the laws of the nation across the country,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

“What makes someone a target of ICE is not their race or ethnicity, but the fact that they are in the country illegally,” she said.

In a news conference, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said that an operation by ICE “means due process will be violated”.

According to local leaders, there are about 80,000 people living there who are originally from Somalia, and the vast majority are American citizens.

Last month, Trump said he planned to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) – a programme for immigrants from countries in crisis – for Somali residents living in Minnesota. A few hundred immigrants would be affected by that order.

TPS for Somalis has existed since 1991, resulting from conflict in the nation.

Earlier this week, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested her agency would target visa fraud in Minnesota.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced an investigation into allegations that tax dollars from the state may have been diverted to the al-Shabab Islamist militant group in Somalia, which is part of al-Qaeda. The probe follows unverified media reports in the US, which have been denied by the militants.

Somalia is one of the poorest nations in the world, and many of the migrants who moved to the US left in the 1990s during the country’s decades-long civil war.

Asked by a reporter about Trump’s comments, Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre said he not personally heard them but had been briefed about them. He pointed out that Trump had not only spoken about Somalia, but had made similar remarks about other African countries, notably Nigeria and South Africa.

The prime minister said his government preferred not to elevate the issue.

“There are things you pass with ‘Salaaman’,” he added, using a Qur’anic expression meaning responding to offence with peace rather than confrontation.

“Making an issue out of it and giving it importance is more harmful than simply moving on,” he said.

Meanwhile, local leaders in Minnesota have directly condemned the Trump administration’s reported plan for an ICE operation.

Minnesota state Senator Zaynab Mohamed said on X that “when ICE agents interact with Somalis here, they will find what we’ve been saying for years: Almost all of us are US citizens”.

Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election and who has been sparring with the president in recent days, said: “We welcome support in investigating and prosecuting crime. But pulling a PR stunt and indiscriminately targeting immigrants is not a real solution to a problem.”

The recent broadening of Trump’s immigration crackdown comes after National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom, 20, was killed in last week’s shooting in Washington DC, and Andrew Wolfe, 24, was seriously injured.

Officials said the suspect entered the US in 2021 as part of a programme for Afghans who worked with US troops during their 20 years in Afghanistan, and who were considered to be at risk of reprisals after the US withdrew.

On Tuesday, Noem said she would recommend a travel ban on several countries which she claimed were “flooding” the US with criminal activity.

Earlier, all US decisions on asylum requests were halted, and a review was announced into green cards that were issued to individuals who migrated to the US from a number of countries. Trump has also threatened to “permanently pause migration” from what he calls “third world countries”.

Additional reporting by Abdinasir Ali