Amherst professor Austin Sarat examines President Donald Trump’s recent statements calling Somalis “garbage” and expressing his desire to remove them from the United States, situating these remarks within the context of ethnic cleansing as defined by international human rights frameworks. Professor Sarat argues that Trump’s rhetoric—combined with concrete actions like deploying ICE agents to target Somalis in Minnesota—comes dangerously close to advocating ethnic cleansing, fundamentally contradicts America’s founding ideals as a nation defined by shared political values rather than ethnicity, and represents an attack on American identity itself.