As some Somali migrants fear what might happen next, the BBC speaks to one deportee in Mogadishu.

Mahad Mohamud is slowly readjusting to the heat, chaos and tension of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, after being deported from the US city of Minneapolis last month just as winter was closing in there.

Somalis know the 36-year-old as Garyaqaan - a word that can be translated as “judge”.

This is the name he uses on TikTok, where he attracted almost half a million followers while he was abroad. Fans praised Mahad for his defence of his clan’s interests - part of Somalia’s lucrative TikTok roasting sub-culture.

But to those running the White House-linked “Rapid Response 47” X account, Mahad was a “criminal illegal scumbag”. In an October post it accused him of being “involved in the kidnapping of French officials” from a hotel in the Somali capital.

Mahad has denied the allegation, saying that he was not in Mogadishu at the time. He was never convicted and the case was dropped.

  • Kiernian@lemmy.world
    4·
    3 days ago

    Knowing that poem meant I got chills from the opening lyrics to the Mayans M.C. theme song when I heard it for the first time:

    Mother of Exiles, the torch of hope.

    In the toss of the tempest, threw us Madison’s rope.

    But the brazen giant, with limbs astride, blocks the golden door to the US of Lies, screaming:

    Fuck your huddled masses, scrub our floors, cut our grasses.

    I am a wolf, a wild cur, cut from the pack, with blood on my fur. Every howl marks the dead.

    Cause a beaten dog never forgets.