Omar compares Stephen Miller’s migrant rhetoric to Nazi descriptions of Jewish people

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., compared White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s remarks about migrants to the way Nazis described Jewish people during an interview on Sunday.

CBS host Margaret Brennan asked Omar to respond to a statement Miller made about migrants. He wrote on social media, “No magic transformation occurs when failed states cross borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.”

Omar said it was “White supremacist rhetoric” before comparing it to Nazis describing Jewish people.

“It reminds me of the way the Nazis described Jewish people in Germany. And you know, as we know, there have been many immigrants who have tried to come to the United States who have turned back, you know, one of them being Jewish immigrants. We know the way that people were described who were coming from Ireland, Irish immigrants,” Omar said.

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“We know the way in which people were described back then, when there were Italian immigrants. And to me, you know, we’re, we’re, yes, of course, ethnically Somali, we are in this country as Americans, we are citizens, we are a productive part of this nation, and we will continue to be,” she added.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Donald Trump has disparaged the Somali community in Minnesota due to the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme in the state. As of November 2025, more than 75 individuals have been charged in connection with the scheme, according to federal prosecutors. 

Some of the individuals are part of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora, which is the largest in the U.S., though the ringleader of the scheme is not.

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Omar responded to Trump’s statements about the Somali community during the interview on Sunday.

“It’s disgusting. It’s completely disgusting. These are Americans that he is calling garbage. And we feel like there is an unhealthy obsession that he has on the Somali community, and an unhealthy and creepy obsession that he has with me. I think it is also really important for us to remember that this kind of hateful rhetoric and this level of dehumanizing can lead to dangerous actions by people who listen to the president,” she said.

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Omar was pressed to explain how the fraud got so out of hand in Minnesota during a recent interview on CNN.

“I think what happened, um, is that, you know, when you have these, kind of new programs that are, um, designed to help people, you’re oftentimes relying on third parties to be able to facilitate. And I just think that a lot of the COVID programs that were set up — they were set up so quickly that a lot of the guardrails did not get created,” Omar said.