Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) says she saw more gun violence in her home state of Minnesota than she did in a Somali refugee camp.
Recalling some of the violence she witnessed during the civil war in Somalia during her youth in the war-torn country, Omar said that she had not seen any violence during her subsequent time in the refugee camp waiting to gain asylum in the United States. Shortly after settling in Minnesota, she witnessed a shooting.
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“For six years, I had the privilege of not seeing any violence until I moved to Minnesota,” she told a crowd at a Gun Violence Community Conversation in Minneapolis on Thursday, the Daily Mail reported.
“My first year in Minnesota, I both saw a person shot at Peavey Park, dead on the floor, three weeks after my father and I arrived in Minneapolis,” she said. “Six months later, I watched the Minneapolis police put 38 bullets into the body of a mentally disabled Somali immigrant who didn’t speak English.”
Omar and her family fled Somalia when she was 8 years old and remained at the Dadaab refugee camp near the border of Kenya and Somalia until she received asylum in the U.S. at the age of 12, according to the outlet. They initially lived in New York and Virginia. Two years after being granted asylum, her family moved to the Twin Cities in Minnesota.
Growing up in Somalia, she witnessed violence and even attended school with classmates who wielded firearms amid the internal conflict.
“I know what that kind of violence looks like, but I was fortunate enough to flee that and seek refuge in a refugee camp for four years where I did not witness that kind of violence,” she said, per the outlet.
In Minneapolis, where her town hall took place, the city recorded 52 homicide offenses last year, according to data from the city government. So far in 2022, there have been 44 recorded instances of homicide, indicating an uptick.
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Omar praised the new bipartisan gun legislation that President Joe Biden signed into law last week during the town hall. The measure provided more funding for school security, mental health, and enhanced background checks.
She also decried the recent Supreme Court decision last week overturning the precedents first established in Roe v. Wade that guaranteed a nationwide right to an abortion.
“Thankfully, in Minnesota, abortion remains legal,” she said, per the outlet.
