The threat level of ending temporary legal safeguards of Somalis residing in Minnesota by President Donald Trump is causing panic in the deeply rooted immigrant populace of Minnesota, with apprehension about whether the White House might have the constitutional capacity to implement the order as proposed.

On Friday, Trump, in a Truth Social post, stated that he will immediately deny Somali residents in Minnesota Temporary Protected Status, a legal protection against deportation of immigrants from some countries.

The announcement was immediately met with criticism by a few state leaders as well as immigration experts who described the move as a legally questionable attempt to instill fear and suspicion of the Somali community of Minnesota, the largest in the country.

“The current protection of a specific community or state with which the president is at loggerheads,” as stated by Heidi Altman, the vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, stated that there is no law in place that would enable the president to end the protection of a specific community or state.

“This,” as Edelman put it, “was Trump acting as he always does, that is, demagoguing immigrants unnecessarily and without evidence, and trying to use that demagoguery to strip away valuable life-saving protections.”

Until the middle of January, the Trump administration has had an opportunity to withdraw the legal status of Somali nationals. Such a step would, however, only be able to touch a small percentage of the tens of thousands of Somalis residing in Minnesota. In August, a report prepared for Congress estimated that only 705 Somalis in the whole country were covered by TPS.

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a democrat representing Somalia, put in a social media post Friday saying that she is a citizen and most Somalis in America are citizens. Good luck with a policy change that, in fact, does not make much difference in the Somali people you love to hate.

“Nevertheless, the move might fuel hate against a community, which might not be beneficial in light of increased Islamophobia,” said the advocates.

“It is not merely a change in bureaucracy,” Jaylani Hussein, who was the president of the Minnesota branch of the Council on American-Islamic relations, told. “It is a political attack on the Muslim and Somali community that is based on Islamophobic and hate speech.”

Trump, in his social media posting, asserted without support that Somali gangs had attacked Minnesota residents and called the state a center of fraudulent money laundering operations.

It has recently seen federal prosecutors charge dozens of individuals in a social-services fraud scheme. Others of the defendants are Somali. Minnesota Republican Rep. Tom Emmer responded to that story by stating that accountability was coming.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, has mentioned that Minnesota is always among the safest states in the country.

“It is no wonder that the President has opted to attack a whole community,” said Walz Friday. “That is what he does in order to switch the subject.”

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, in response to the announcement by Trump, said his office was considering all of its options, including that Trump could not end TPS to only one state or in a bigotry-driven spurt

“It is because Somali people went to Minnesota to escape civil war, anarchy, and starvation and have become part of our state, our culture, and our society,” he added.

Somalians have been granted protection 27 times since 1991, and the U.S. authorities found it to be unsafe to allow individuals who are already in the United States to travel back to the country.

Decades ago, Somalia was considered one of the countries the world deems to be most dangerous. Since the removal of leader Siad Barre in 1991 by clan-based militias and the civil war erupted, people have been fleeing. The anarchy then saw the emergence of al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabab militant organization, which continues to occupy portions of the country and perpetrate lethal attacks in the capital, Mogadishu, and other regions against the weak federal government.

Local activists observe that the Somali community in Minnesota has contributed to the redevelopment of the downtowns in Minneapolis and that they are very vocal in the political arena of the state.

The fact is that the Somali community is cherished and well-knit in the composite of most of the neighborhoods and communities in Minnesota, as Altman remarked. We are all less secure and not more, in case we destabilize our families and communities.

In an effort to implement an overall strategy of pursuing hardline immigration policies, the Trump administration has acted to revoke numerous protections that had enabled immigrants to stay in the United States and work within the confines of the law.

That was a cancellation of TPS of 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians who were provided with protection under President Joe Biden. The Trump government has also tried to restrict the immigration services offered to migrants in Cuba and Syria, among others.