Samsam Khalif has provided child care in San Diego long enough to watch babies become adults. Some still come back to visit her. She loves her work. Now, she’s afraid.
On Tuesday, she was returning home with children in her car and saw two young men with a camera parked outside.
She was scared. She circled the block twice, hoping they would leave.
She didn’t want to keep the children in the car for too long, so she eventually parked and went inside. She said when the men saw her enter with the children, they drove away.
She’s not alone in her experience.
In December, President Donald Trump called Somali people “garbage.”
Weeks later, a YouTube influencer began surveilling Somali-run child care centers in Minnesota and making unverified claims of fraud.
This month, President Trump announced he would freeze federal child care funding to Minnesota, California and three other Democrat-led states while he investigated fraud.
Then union leaders said the harassment spread to San Diego.
The San Diego Chapter of the United Domestic Workers of America said it’s heard of at least seven incidents since Monday of strangers surveilling, harassing, and even stalking Somali child care providers — and the incidents are likely underreported.
They encouraged providers to report these incidents to the police as hate crimes and to make sure they get the incident report number.
City Council member Sean Elo-Rivera said he will work with the police department to ensure the reports are appropriately handled.
“Choosing to make the Somali community — every Somali and Somali-American in this country — a suspect for fraud is racist. It is unfair. And it is completely inconsistent with the incredible work that the Somali Americans in San Diego do to make San Diego a better place,” he said.
San Diego is home to the country’s second-largest population of Somali refugees after Minnesota.
Khalif said she no longer feels safe. She installed a new security system in her house, and encouraged her friends to do the same.
She said she fled to the U.S. from Somalia to feel safe.
“And now I'm feeling this way, I mean, under the Constitution in America. It surprises me,” she said.
