Which municipalities and precincts in the 5th District have the largest Somali‑American and other immigrant communities?
Executive summary
Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District concentrates much of the state’s Somali‑American population and a broad mosaic of other immigrant communities, with the densest Somali settlement in Minneapolis — especially the Cedar‑Riverside neighborhood — and substantial immigrant households across parts of Saint Paul and several inner‑ring suburbs [1] [2]. Official language and demographic profiles for CD‑5 show high numbers of Somali/Amharic/Hmong and Spanish‑speaking households, but precinct‑level data are not available in the supplied reporting and therefore cannot be mapped here with precision [3] [2].
1. Where the Somalis live: Minneapolis and Cedar‑Riverside anchor the community
The largest concentration of Somali‑Americans in the 5th District is in Minneapolis, with the Cedar‑Riverside neighborhood long described as the epicenter for newly arrived and established Somali residents and community institutions — a pattern reflected in multiple demographic histories that call the Twin Cities the largest Somali diaspora in the U.S. [1]. State and national summaries underscore that a significant share of the nation’s Somali population lives in Minnesota — historically estimated in the tens of thousands — and many of those residents cluster in the Twin Cities metropolitan area rather than evenly across the district [4] [5].
2. Beyond Somali: a multi‑ethnic immigrant patchwork across the district
The 5th District is explicitly described as one of Minnesota’s most diverse, with roughly 16% of residents being immigrants and the top countries of origin listed as Somalia, Ethiopia, Mexico, India, Laos, Ecuador and Liberia, signaling sizeable Ethiopian, Latino and Southeast Asian presences alongside the Somali community [2]. Language data for the congressional district show Spanish as the most common non‑English household language, followed by Amharic/Somali/Afro‑Asiatic languages and Hmong, indicating both sizeable Latino and Southeast Asian immigrant communities within CD‑5 as well as East African populations [3].
3. Saint Paul and inner suburbs: important secondary centers
While Minneapolis hosts the densest Somali neighborhoods, the broader Twin Cities metropolitan area — including parts of Saint Paul and inner suburbs — contains dispersed Somali and other immigrant households as families seek housing, jobs and schools; reporting notes that many Somalis live throughout the metro and that some professionals move to suburbs for family reasons [1]. Data sources supplied summarize the district’s language and immigration profiles at the congressional level rather than by municipality precinct, so identification of particular suburban precincts with the “largest” immigrant counts is not possible from these materials alone [3] [6].
4. Political and media framing: why place matters in CD‑5
The demographic weight of Somali and other immigrant communities has been central to political narratives about CD‑5 — cited as a factor in electing Somali‑American representatives and in media commentary about identity politics — and the community has been the focus of national political attention and enforcement actions, which shapes how local concentrations are reported and politicized [7] [4]. Recent national enforcement and political stories have spotlighted Somali populations in Minnesota and beyond, but those accounts reflect policy and partisan aims as much as raw population geography; the supplied reporting documents such attention without supplying finer‑grained precinct counts [8].
5. What the reporting does and does not show — limits and next steps
The assembled sources consistently identify Minneapolis (especially Cedar‑Riverside) and the broader Twin Cities metro as the principal centers for Somali‑American and other immigrant communities in CD‑5, and they provide district‑level language and country‑of‑origin tallies that highlight Somali, Ethiopian, Spanish‑speaking, and Hmong presences [1] [3] [2]. However, the materials do not include official precinct‑level population breakdowns or a municipality‑by‑municipality ranked list within the 5th District; producing that map would require census tract or voting‑precinct data from the Minnesota State Demographic Center or local municipal planning departments [6]. Where precinct specificity is required, those sources are the appropriate next step.