“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. Their country is no good for a reason …”
This is what United States President Donald Trump had to say about Somali migrants on the first day of an immigration crackdown targeting their community. He insisted that Somali migrants have turned the US state of Minnesota, where some 2 percent of the population is of Somali descent, into a “hellhole” and should be “out of here”. Then, directing his ire at his vocal critic, Ilhan Omar, a Somali-born Democratic representative from Minnesota, Trump said, “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great. ’”
Of course, none of this is new or surprising. Hatred of migrants and asylum seekers has always been the glue that holds Trump’s MAGAverse together. Who can forget that, before his cordial meeting with Trump at the White House, several MAGA Republicans made serious efforts to revoke the US citizenship of New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Since Trump’s rise to power, hostility to migrants has become not just a mainstream component of contemporary politics in the United States but a governing principle.
But the rise in anti-migrant sentiment, and its validation and promotion by those in positions of power, is not exclusive to Trump’s increasingly insular America. Similar rhetoric and tactics are gaining ground elsewhere, revealing a global trend that extends far beyond the United States. Denmark is one such example.
Beneath its long-cultivated image as a progressive, humane and orderly society built on universal healthcare, Lego, highly liveable cities and minimalist designer aesthetics, Denmark has in recent years become one of Europe’s most restrictive states on immigration and asylum. During the recently concluded local elections, Islamophobic rhetoric was on full display, and in the lead-up to the 2026 national elections, the ruling Social Democrats have placed their commitment to tackling the so-called problem of immigration at the centre of their campaign.
Across the pond, in the United Kingdom, the supposedly progressive Labour government seems eager to follow the Danish example. Under pressure from the far right and Reform UK’s enduring rise in the polls, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is eager to convince people that he can be trusted to take back control of our borders and close the book on a squalid chapter of Britain’s immigration policy.
Excerpted: ‘Xenophobia runs the world’. Courtesy: Aljazeera.com
