I was scrolling late the other night when a habit I really need to break and stumbled across a video that stopped me cold. A filmmaker, just walking around Minneapolis asking perfectly innocent questions, suddenly finds himself in the middle of something that feels more like a scene from overseas than the American Midwest. And honestly? It’s been rattling around in my head ever since.
When “Hello” Becomes a Confrontation
The footage is short, maybe two minutes, but it says more than most hour-long documentaries ever manage. The guy behind the camera is calm, almost polite. He approaches people on a public sidewalk in the Cedar-Riverside area and asks a simple question: “What’s it like being a Muslim in the United States?”
You’d think in a country that prides itself on free speech you’d get answers ranging from “great” to “it has its challenges.” Instead, the responses come fast and hostile.
“Delete the footage.”
“I’m not speaking English. Only one Somali language.”
“Can women speak on camera?”
“No.”
Watching it live felt surreal. These aren’t teenagers being edgy. These are grown men, on an entire street corner of them, openly rejecting the most basic expectations of living in America: speak the common language, respect public filming, treat women as equals in public space. All of it, right there on camera.
Little Mogadishu Isn’t a Nickname Anymore
People have called the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood “Little Mogadishu” for years. At first it was just a playful reference to the growing Somali population. But walk those streets today and the joke doesn’t feel funny anymore.
Empty storefronts with signs only in Somali. Groups of men lingering for hours. Women in full coverings hurrying past, heads down. And now we have video evidence that large parts of the community have zero interest in even pretending to adopt American norms when a camera is rolling.
That last point matters. Most immigrants, even ones who keep their culture at home, understand there’s a public face you put on in the host country. A little code-switching. A smile for the camera. Not here. The mask didn’t just slip; it was ripped off and thrown on the ground.
A Thirty Years of Resettlement, Zero Progress?
Somali migration to Minnesota started in the early 1990s. Refugee agencies, churches, and the federal government worked together to bring tens of thousands directly from camps in Kenya. The pitch was simple: America offers safety, education, opportunity. In return, refugees would build new lives and contribute.
Three decades later the population has passed 100,000, possibly much higher if you count undocumented arrivals and birth rates. And yet entire sections of the city feel foreign in a way that goes beyond food or clothing.
- Public schools where English is the second (or third) language for the majority of students
- Business districts operating almost entirely in Somali
- Government meetings with Somali-language interpreters as the norm
- Even the mayor giving major speeches in Somali first
I’m not against immigrants keeping their language or faith. My own grandparents spoke broken English their whole lives. But they still learned enough to get by, sent their kids to public school, and never once told an American to delete footage for filming in public.
The Fraud That Keeps Growing
It’s not just cultural separation. The financial scandals keep piling up, and they’re massive.
Remember the Feeding Our Future case? More than 250 million dollars in federal child-nutrition money allegedly stolen by a network of Somali-run nonprofits during COVID. Fake meal sites, fake attendance sheets, money laundered through shell companies and sent overseas. Dozens indicted, hundreds of millions still missing.
Then there are the autism-program and daycare scams that drained tens of millions more. State legislators openly say we’re only seeing “the tip of the iceberg.”
When trust breaks down at that scale, people stop seeing immigration as charity and start seeing it as predation. Harsh? Maybe. But when the same community producing viral videos of open contempt is also producing nine-figure fraud, the dots connect themselves.
Deportation Panic Is Already Here
The new administration hasn’t wasted time. Temporary Protected Status for Somalis is on the chopping block. ICE officials are openly talking about “Operation Twin Shield” raids targeting marriage fraud, visa overstays, and forged documents.
Somali and broader Muslim migrant communities in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Columbus, and beyond are reportedly in full-blown fear mode. Community leaders hold emergency meetings. WhatsApp groups light up with warnings. Some families are already sending children back “home” before anything official drops.
Whether you think that fear is justified or long overdue, the temperature is rising fast.
What Happens When Integration Fails Completely?
Europe has been living this reality for twenty years. Parts of Malmö, Brussels, Paris suburbs function as parallel societies with their own rules, their own economy, sometimes their own police. America always told itself “it can’t happen here.”
But when a filmmaker can’t ask a simple question on a public street without being threatened, when “no English” becomes a political statement, when women are openly banned from appearing on camera in 2025 America, we’re not having an academic debate anymore.
We’re watching the early stages of balkanization in real time.
And the hardest pill to swallow? This didn’t happen by accident. Decades of deliberate policy open borders refugee dumps without integration requirements, generous welfare that removes incentive to adapt, politicians chasing ethnic voting blocs created exactly this outcome.
The video from Cedar-Riverside isn’t an outlier. It’s the moment the curtain finally got pulled back.
I don’t know what comes next. Raids? Protests? Political backlash? Maybe all three. But one thing feels certain: the era of pretending everything is fine just ended. And a lot of people, on every side of this, are never going to un-see that footage.
Sometimes a two-minute street clip tells you more about the state of a nation than a thousand think-tank reports ever could.
