Natalie Kitroeff

This has really become a moment where the administration has turned its focus to specific groups of immigrants from places that, as you said, have a reputation for instability, for conflict.

And the message the White House has been sending about these people is that they're importing cultures into America that are not welcome.

You know, Stephen Miller, Trump's domestic policy advisor, recently posted this on social media.

He said, quote, And then in his comments on Tuesday, Trump seems to pick up right where Miller left off.

It also just strikes me that this is all happening, this conversation, so much more out in the open than it was in Trump's first term.

I mean, I think a lot of us will remember the comment that Trump made about shithole countries.

That was behind closed doors.

That was a comment made in private that was later revealed.

Now he's doing this in front of his cabinet, in front of the cameras rolling.

And to be clear, the people that Trump is talking about here are Somalis, most of whom you've told us have legal status or are citizens.

So I want to ask, given that, what do you expect the ICE operations to look like there?

I mean, what are they going to do?

Who are they looking for?

Can we pull back here for a minute?

Because it's worth saying what we're seeing here isn't just an immigration operation.

Trump's comments and these actions seem to be just as much about delegitimizing a group of people who either emigrated here and became American citizens or their parents did.

The president is calling into question their American-ness and really calling into question whether your ability as an immigrant or a child of immigrants to call yourself an American depends on where you're from.

And I'd imagine whether their American-ness could be called into question any time a single or a few members of their community make a mistake.

And Ernesto, what about the reckoning that you described happening in Minnesota around the original scandal that prompted all of this, the fraud?

I mean, you had said that the state was really starting to have a conversation about how this fear of being perceived as racist or called racist, the fear of a backlash, had led to this very well-intentioned system being totally corrupted.