On a warm summer night two decades ago, I sat around a table at a Minneapolis restaurant with five young Somali men who were living in the Twin Cities, the country’s largest Somali diaspora.

It felt like a transitional time for Somalis, who by then had been living in Minnesota for about 15 years. Some elders in the community had recently floated the idea of a “Somali council” – an elected body that would serve as a kind of advisory board to the Somali community and as a conduit to the state Legislature.

The idea never gained any traction, but it made for a spirited discussion that night. The men weren’t sold on the idea, though they understood the sentiment behind it – concern, among older Somalis, that disagreements about the civil war in Somalia and other rifts were damaging the community. 

As one of the men, Mukhtar Gaaddasaar, told me then: “Many Somalis living in the diaspora are out of touch.”

It was an enlightening exchange that contributed to an idea for a book I wrote that is 20 years old this fall: “The New Minnesotans: Stories of Immigrants and Refugees.” 

The book is mostly how the title sounds: stories built around my interactions with the Hmong, Somalis, Latinos, Russians and a host of others who, for years, I had had the privilege of meeting and writing about.

More specifically, it was about how those newcomers were balancing their cultures and histories with life in Minnesota. Gaaddasaar, for instance, factored into a chapter called “A Most Urgent Matter: Somali Politics, Here and Abroad.”

Another chapter took a close look at the lingering practice of polygamy in the Hmong community. Another reflected on the work of groups that were trying to preserve Latino and Hispanic culture in Minnesota. Still another looked at how newcomers – many of whom were just learning to speak English – were navigating nuts-and-bolts civic obligations, such as paying their taxes. 

As I put it in the book, a “cultural strainer” was at work in Minnesota, sifting ideas and practices that sat uneasily alongside democratic civic life. Others have come up with better metaphors than mine (the poetic-sounding “braided river” is a good one), but they are really just ways of thinking about assimilation.

A contemporary view

Joel Wurl, at the time the associate director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota – and a good source for me as I wrote about this phenomenon – wrote the foreword to the book, characterizing modern assimilation as a two-way street.

“What has become better appreciated today,” he wrote then, “is the equal reality that assimilation is not unidirectional: the mainstream adapts to the immigrant as surely as the immigrant adapts to the mainstream.”

I caught up with Wurl, now retired and living in Lodi, California, this summer and asked him for a birdseye view on how things looked these days, not just in Minnesota but nationwide, in this era of heightened enforcement exemplified by the excesses of Operation Metro Surge.

“The cultural blending is apparent, and you see it in the schools and you see it on the streets and you see it in places of worship,” he said. “People for the most part are getting along. But now those with uncertain legal status – a lot of them are living in fear.” 

Related: Immigration was revitalizing small-town Minnesota, but Republicans didn’t care

In 2006, as I noted in the book, demographers estimated that there were 175,000 Latinos and Hispanics, 60,000 Hmong, 25,000 Somalis and 25,000 Vietnamese among Minnesota’s newest immigrant groups. Today, those populations have swelled to an estimated 422,000 Hispanics and Latinos, 107,000 Somalis, 106,000 Hmong and 25,000 Vietnamese. And there are many others.

As those populations have grown, I have been encouraged by things that connect and broaden us, like the immigrant-focused stories in the Sahan Journal; the success of Latino businesses in many small towns; and the shared cultural cache surrounding Olympic champion Suni Lee and celebrity chef Yia Vang.

But I also wonder about the things that have created a kind of stalemate in our pursuit of a common narrative, such as the growth of ethnic-based charter schools; pent-up frustration over our outdated immigration system; and the social services scandals that have, however unfairly, stigmatized Somalis. 

“I feel like we are at loggerheads right now and have to work through some fundamental questions on who we want to be,” Wurl said. “At some point we have to really work through what is a very fundamental disagreement about the extent to which the U.S. is and can continue to be shaped by immigration.”

In writing this piece, I reunited with two sources who figured prominently in the book to gauge their thoughts on assimilation (a word many now don’t like), finding common ground and their lives in Minnesota. 

Embracing civic life

Jamal Adam was part of that group of men I spoke with on that long-ago night in Minneapolis.

Besides the Somali council, they discussed the civil war in their homeland that had led their families to the West and shared their dreams about how they might contribute one day to a democratic Somalia.

“I would like to take back to Somalia the civic culture that we have here so they can move forward from clan kinship to something that is greater,” Adam said back then. “This is the greatest asset that we can bring to the country.”

Alas, Adam never did return to Somalia to stay, studying in Minnesota instead and putting down roots in Minneapolis with his wife and daughter.

Looking back, Adam says the Somali council idea was a sign of a fracture in the community between the older generation and the new.

These days, he told me, elders are “becoming more irrelevant.” Moreover, clan loyalties aren’t what they once were, though he said they still hold some sway among many Somalis, often in positive ways – contributing, for instance, to a culture of charity that supports orphanages or hospitals in Somalia.

Adam, husband to Yasmin Omer and father to their young daughter, holds a Ph.D. in psychology and runs 826 MSP, a writing and leadership program that focuses on immigrant youth. Some recent book titles published by 826 MSP include “Indigenous Originated: Walking in Two Worlds,” “Raft: Imagining the Rising Tide of Climate Change,” and “More than One Voice,” a compilation of fiction by 6th-grade students.

He’s also, like many Minnesotans these days, a gig worker, teaching courses at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota on the side and counseling on the weekends.

Related: Immigrants and refugees in Minnesota – connecting past and present

Slowly, Adam said, he has felt himself absorbed into the local fabric, though he hadn’t thought about how to characterize it. “I didn’t set out to assimilate,” he said, but rather, over time, “just slowly became part of the community.”

And those idealistic thoughts about democratic culture? He’s “into things that are more civic” these days, like the Rotary Club. (Yasmin, he said with a chuckle, is more into the cultural trappings of American life, like shopping).

He said Minnesotans’ famous reserve continues to humor him, noting that gatherings with white friends last 90 minutes while get-togethers with his Somali friends run on for hours “until I have to kick them out because I have papers to grade and a kid to put to bed!” 

Somalis, of course, have been in the public eye in recent years, blamed broadly for the Feeding Our Future fraud case that did involve dozens of Somalis but also several white Minnesotans, including the convicted leader of the scheme.

He regretted that the scandal led people to paint Somalis with a broad brush and prompted President Donald Trump’s comment about Somalis being “garbage,” but he said his family is firmly part of the Minnesota firmament. 

“Yeah, I like it here,” he said, enjoying the warm weather at a coffee shop in Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood, “though check back with me in February.”

Finding a ‘sense of belonging’

When I first met the Rev. Bea Vue-Benson, she was a pastor at Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church in St. Paul and the first Hmong woman to be ordained by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Her work then centered around Hmong teenagers, many from tradition-bound families who were struggling to navigate life in Minnesota. Part of that work was an often-lonely battle she was waging against the practice of polygamy, a tradition that had carried into Minnesota but was (and still is) illegal in all 50 states. (Some groups now think its time has come). 

Vue-Benson exemplified the kind of young immigrant I had been meeting who was helping me to understand the cultural landscape. I wrote then: “As I reported on refugees, I would meet others like Vue-Benson: educated and ambitious, fiercely loyal to their native culture but willing to shed light on its darkest corners.”

By then, the Hmong had been living in Minnesota for three decades, their story as American allies during the Vietnam War well told. But their tight-knit culture still bumped up against American individualism, she told me.

These days, Vue-Benson, who has two adult children, works with young families as a marriage and family therapist in St. Paul.

Polygamy has faded, as Vue-Benson predicted it would. Moreover, Hmong elders no longer mediate marriages to the extent they once did, she said, though she regrets that “bride prices” – similar to a dowry, though paid by the groom’s family – remain. “It’s one of those old traditions that will take longer to die,” she said. “I wish it would!”

When we met at a St. Paul coffee shop this summer, Operation Metro Surge was still a fresh wound.

Related: Amid fears of ICE raids, Minneapolis businesses say some customers are scared and staying home

During the enforcement action, she installed locks on her office doors in case ICE agents came looking for people, something she had never thought of doing in 15 years of her practice. While no one ever came and knocked on the door, the psychological damage was done. 

“There was a very real fear that Black or brown people could be targeted coming to the office,” she said.

It was a painful irony, she added, that many immigrants and refugees who had sought safety in the United States were feeling the weight of the kind of authoritarianism they had left behind.

But she was buoyed by the response of those Minnesotans who braved the cold and snow in protest and to document arrests. (Several who were later honored with a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award will be guests at this year’s MinnPost Festival).

“There’s something about the Midwest and compassion that gets lived out in churches and in businesses and in neighborhoods,” she said. “People do a pretty good job of respecting the dignity of all people.”

Vue-Benson lives in a diverse St. Paul neighborhood where racial minorities now make up the majority. She’s taken part in National Night Out for the past seven years, saying, “I feel more integrated and have a sense of belonging and I’m involved with my neighbors.”

And that word I keep bringing up, assimilation? 

“‘Interdependent’ is the word I like,” she said.

From Kabul to Minneapolis

While I was working on this article, I was reminded of the “cyclical nature of American immigration” (as I put it in the book) when I was introduced to Faramin Mikaeel, a young Afghan journalist and teacher who fled that country in 2024 in the wake of the United States’ military withdrawal three years earlier. 

Mikaeel said he and his wife, Razia, came to the United States under refugee status after being harassed by the Taliban, the theocratic regime that has reestablished power in Afghanistan. He had worked for the Kabul Times and at the Erdak Institute of Higher Education.

Mikaeel has written about the loss of freedom and democracy in his home country. Of his and his wife’s flight out of Kabul for the West, he recalled: “It was like a rebirth or a reincarnation.”

Their anxiety, he added, “totally dissolved when we started thinking about life in a new country, a country we had always dreamt of living in – the United States.”

Related: For almost a year, I’ve observed Fort Snelling’s immigration court. Here’s how much has changed.

The couple, who have two young children, lived in Oklahoma first, then moved to Virginia and, last October, to Minneapolis, where a brother of Faramin lives. 

They have found the state to their liking – “We found that term ‘Minnesota Nice’ to be a real thing!” he said – and stay in touch with Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services and other aid agencies for job tips and other help. 

Over a drink at a Minnetonka restaurant this summer, Faramin told me he hoped to teach again or work as a journalist or maybe even pen a novel (he had just finished powering through a 3,000-page work by Marcel Proust) – anything to make use of his love of words and ideas.

“I read, and I write,” he said with a smile.

In the meantime, Razia is working part-time at a Target store. They have both applied for a Permanent Residency Card (better known as a green card), which would allow them to live and work here indefinitely. 

If it all works out, it’s the North Star State where they hope to stay and thrive, joining a new generation of New Minnesotans.

Gregg Aamot is an associate editor at MinnPost.

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