Donald Trump spat out the word like something rotten: ‘Garbage,’ he said. ‘They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country.’ His voice rising, his rage unmistakable, he railed against Somali immigrants in the United States.
It was a line designed to explode across the airwaves.
Trump wasn’t shouting into a void – he was pressing on a wound. In Minnesota, home to one of America’s biggest Somali communities, prosecutors are unpicking one of the largest frauds in US history.
The FBI says that during the Covid-era, the Feeding Our Future non-profit organisation – which claimed to be serving more than 40,000 meals to poor schoolchildren every week – siphoned off $250million (£187million) in grants and donations, and funnelled the money into luxury cars, houses and private bank accounts.
