Saeed Fahia serves as Director of the Confederation of Somali Communities of Minnesota (CSCM), an open-borders group that advocates on behalf of East African immigrants to the United States. Fahia, who holds a Ph.D. in Education, says that young Somali newcomers to the U.S. tend to “struggle with alienation in the cultural cross-fire of Somali tradition and American freedom.”

At a June 28, 2003 protest in Minneapolis, Fahia denounced what he characterized as America’s overly harsh immigration restrictions. “We have left a country [Somalia] that was at war with itself,” he said. “However, we have found ourselves in another kind of war, that of deportations, profiling, and discrimination.”