Oregon Senate Majority Leader Kayse Jama, D-Portland, is speaking out against President Donald Trump’s comments Tuesday during a cabinet meeting, when he called Somali immigrants “garbage” and claimed that they didn’t contribute to the United States.

“I don’t want them in our country,” Trump told reporters. “Their country is no good for a reason.”

Jama, a Somali refugee who arrived in Portland in 1998, entered the state senate in 2021. He is one of 12,000 to 15,000 Somali refugees in Oregon.

“President Trump’s cruelty has been the central feature of his immigration policies,” Jama said in a statement on the Oregon Senate Democrats’ Facebook page Thursday. “Now he is directing his hatred at Somali Americans specifically, as well as immigrants and refugees from 18 other countries.”

The

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