Ranking member warns against xenophobic questioning of Somali community during fraud hearing

During remarks at a subcommittee hearing, an unidentified ranking member criticized earlier lines of questioning he described as xenophobic and cautioned the committee against generalizing about groups based on isolated statistics.

“Do you think they vote for Democrats? Do you think they just give money to Democrats? ... What is your opinion of Somalis? ... What is your opinion of Jews? ... What is your opinion of black people? ... That sort of thing ... creates a slippery slope,” the ranking member said, warning that such questions risk turning oversight into partisan or discriminatory inquiry.

He said he was concerned by what he called xenophobia earlier in the hearing and urged colleagues to keep the work nonpartisan so the committee could effectively pursue fraud prevention and protect taxpayers. He cited a statistic reported earlier in the proceeding that of more than 100,000 Somalis in the country, 87 were indicted in Minnesota, noting that equated to roughly 0.087% and arguing that such figures should not be used to generalize about an entire community.

The ranking member concluded by stressing that keeping investigations nonpartisan is necessary to maintain public trust and to focus on preventing harm to taxpayers; he then yielded back to the chair.

The transcript does not include the prior questions he criticized nor any response to his admonition in the provided excerpt.