WASHINGTON — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) ignited a political firestorm Sunday after comparing former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who is Jewish, to Nazi propagandists while blasting the administration’s rapidly escalating crackdown on Somali immigrants in Minnesota.

Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, Omar said Miller’s recent comments about mass migration mirrored the dehumanizing language used in 1930s Germany.

“When I think about Stephen Miller and his white supremacist rhetoric, it reminds me of the way the Nazis described Jewish people in Germany.”
— Rep. Ilhan Omar

Her remarks were prompted by an X post from Miller, long known as the intellectual backbone of Trump’s hardline immigration agenda. In that post, Miller argued that high levels of migration import “entire societies,” warning that migrants “recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.”

Miller’s Post: Fuel for a Political Explosion

Miller’s message — already controversial — landed amid heightened national tensions following Trump’s explosive Thanksgiving-week rant declaring Somali immigrants “garbage” and accusing Minnesota’s large Somali diaspora of “ruining” the state following a massive COVID-era welfare fraud case.

Miller’s framing of migration as “importing societies” was quickly seized upon by Omar, who has faced a barrage of attacks from Trump for years and has become the administration’s most high-profile target in the latest immigration crackdown.

Although critics have repeatedly accused Miller of promoting white nationalist ideas, Omar’s direct comparison to Nazi descriptions of Jews is one of the sharpest attacks leveled by a sitting member of Congress.
The White House has not commented on her remarks.

Backdrop: Fraud Scandal, ICE Raids, and Trump’s Rhetoric

The political temperature in Minnesota has been at a boil after the Trump administration ordered federal immigration officials to target Somali immigrants following the revelation of a $1 billion-plus fraud scheme involving COVID-era child nutrition and social services programs.

Dozens of defendants in that case — many but not all Somali-American — have been convicted or charged. Omar has acknowledged the fraud but argues it resulted from sloppy, rapidly expanded pandemic programs, not ethnic or cultural factors.

Trump, however, has used the scandal to justify a massive crackdown — and unleashed some of the harshest rhetoric of his presidency.

During a Cabinet meeting last week, Trump declared:

“Ilhan Omar is garbage.”

“Her friends are garbage.”

“When they come from hell and complain… we don’t want them in our country.”

ICE operations in Minneapolis and St. Paul surged almost immediately afterward, prompting panic in Somali neighborhoods and fierce pushback from local officials and civil rights groups.

Omar blasted Trump’s comments as dangerous:

“These are Americans that he is calling garbage. This level of dehumanizing can lead to dangerous actions by people who listen to the president.”

Miller: Somali Fraud Is “The Greatest Theft in American History”

In an interview with Fox News’ Hannity, Miller said the administration’s investigations into Minnesota’s COVID-era programs would reveal unprecedented criminal activity:

“We believe that the Somali fraud operation in Minnesota is the single greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in American history.”

He promised more revelations “that will shock the American people.”

A Political Flashpoint With No End in Sight

Omar’s Nazi comparison — aimed at a Jewish policymaker — has set off a fresh wave of outrage on the right, with critics calling it reckless, offensive, and historically illiterate.

Her allies argue she is calling out dangerous rhetoric, not attacking Judaism.

Meanwhile, the administration’s immigration enforcement surge continues, with Minnesota once again emerging as ground zero in the national fight over migrant communities, welfare fraud, and political rhetoric that grows more incendiary by the day.