On a granite-coloured stretch of the Mississippi, where Scottish and Swedish quarrymen once split stone for the nation’s courthouses, the sambusas now fry in oil and the call to prayer carries across 33rd Avenue North. The story of the Somalis in Saint Cloud is barely three decades old, and yet it has already remade the rhythm of central Minnesota’s largest city. They came for meatpacking wages and a college campus, and they stayed to build markets, mosques and a future their children will inherit.
The Place
Saint Cloud sits on the Mississippi River about 65 miles north-west of the Twin Cities, just below the point where the Sauk River joins the larger stream. It was first settled in 1851 and incorporated as a single city in 1856, formed when three riverside settlements known as Upper, Middle and Lower town merged into one.
The city earned its enduring nickname, the Granite City, after its first quarry opened in 1868. By 1920 there were twenty active quarries employing some 2,500 men, many of them Scottish and Swedish immigrants drawn by the stone. That older settler story endures in the German Catholic heritage of St. Cloud and the surrounding Stearns County parishes.
Today Saint Cloud is home to roughly 68,000 people, anchored by St. Cloud State University and a working riverfront. It is a city built by newcomers, and the most recent of them came not from Glasgow or Stockholm but from Mogadishu.
How It Became Somali
Somalia’s central government collapsed in 1991, and the civil war that followed scattered hundreds of thousands of people into refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, and from there to resettlement countries around the world. Minnesota, with its well established refugee resettlement agencies and faith based sponsors, became the single largest American destination for Somalis. Between 1979 and 2017 the state received nearly 24,000 Somali refugees, more than any other. The story is mirrored in the Somali enclave of Cedar-Riverside in Minneapolis, often called Little Mogadishu, and in smaller communities such as the Somalis who reshaped Lewiston, Maine.
The whistle from Marshall
The first Somalis to reach central Minnesota in the early 1990s did not come for cold weather. They came for work. Word spread through the refugee community that the meatpacking plants in rural Minnesota were hiring, and that the jobs required strong hands rather than fluent English.
Some of the earliest arrivals started in Marshall, a small town less than 150 miles south-west of Saint Cloud, then radiated outward as relatives followed relatives. The same chain pulled Somalis to bigger hubs too, from the vast community in Columbus, Ohio to the Somali families of San Diego. The packing plants peppered along the Mississippi riverbank near Saint Cloud offered the same proposition: a steady entry level wage, and a foothold.
The plants and the prayer dispute
Poultry processing was the great early employer. Gold’n Plump, the regional chicken company, drew Somali workers to its lines, and the staffing agencies that fed those plants became a flashpoint. The Work Connection, a St. Paul based agency that handled hiring for Gold’n Plump, was later accused in litigation of asking Muslim applicants to sign forms acknowledging they would not refuse to handle pork.
Disputes over prayer breaks and halal practice followed Somali workers from plant to plant across the state. These were not abstract debates. They were arguments about whether a devout Muslim could hold a Minnesota factory job without surrendering his faith, and they shaped the terms on which the community settled.
The population erupts
For its first fifteen years the Somali presence in Saint Cloud was small and largely tied to the plants. Then, in the 2010s, the numbers climbed sharply. Much of the growth came not from overseas but from within the United States, families moving to Stearns County from New York, Texas and elsewhere to be near kin.
State figures bear this out. Between 2010 and 2016, Minnesota recorded roughly 3,740 documented secondary arrivals of Somalis, settling mainly in Hennepin, Stearns and Kandiyohi counties. Saint Cloud, the seat of Stearns County, was a primary beneficiary of that internal migration.
By the 2020 census Saint Cloud counted around 7,515 residents of Somali origin, close to eleven per cent of the city’s population. Among Minnesota cities only Waite Park and Pelican Rapids had higher Somali shares, according to census figures compiled on the history of Somalis in Minnesota. The city long nicknamed White Cloud had become, by the most common shorthand, about one tenth Somali.
The campus and the classroom
St. Cloud State University gave the community a second magnet alongside the plants. The school enrols students from nearly a hundred countries, and its Somali Student Association became a fixture of campus life, a place where the children of meatpackers studied accounting and nursing. The arc echoes that of the Hmong of Minneapolis, an earlier refugee community that turned wartime exile into a permanent Minnesota home.
The transformation has been most visible in the public schools. By 2016 roughly a quarter of the students at Apollo High School were of Somali descent. In 2022 the St. Cloud district launched what was reported as Minnesota’s first Somali language immersion programme, a recognition that the mother tongue was now a heritage worth teaching back to children who spoke English first.
The Landmarks
Islamic Center of St. Cloud, 375 5th Avenue South. Established in 2007, the centre has grown to several locations across the city and offers lectures in both English and Somali. For nearly two decades it has been the spiritual anchor of Muslim life in central Minnesota, a place where the day is still organised around five prayers.
Mogadishu Grocery, 1725 7th Street South. Serving Saint Cloud since 2005, this converted former petrol station is part restaurant, part grocery and part clothing shop. The entirely halal kitchen turns out goat cutlets, grilled chicken and goat soup, the sort of food that tastes of home to anyone who grew up near the Indian Ocean coast.
Hormud Meat & Grocery Market, 3360 West Division Street. Open since 2012, Hormud combines a halal butcher counter, a grocery, a restaurant and a coffee shop under one roof. The menu reads like a Somali feast: sambusas, suqaar, bariis with meat, muufo and jabaati.
Midnimo Grocery, Halal Meat and Restaurant, 2 21st Avenue South. Its name means unity in Somali, and the shop lives up to it, pairing a halal meat market and grocery with a restaurant of East African staples. It is the kind of place where a family does a week’s shopping and stays for lunch.
Star City Mall, near 33rd Avenue North and 3rd Street North. This strip mall on the city’s north side has become a hub of Somali owned shops and services, the closest thing Saint Cloud has to a community high street. In January 2026 it drew national attention when an immigration enforcement operation in its car park brought out a crowd of hundreds.
Shabelle Business Center. Named for the Shabelle River that runs through southern Somalia, this centre gathers Somali owned businesses under one roof, from groceries and dining to tax preparation and travel services. It functions as a one stop bazaar, the descendant of the open air markets of Mogadishu rebuilt indoors against the Minnesota winter.
Somali Cafe & Restaurant. A neighbourhood favourite known for its chicken sambusas and sweet, cardamom scented tea, with an entirely halal menu. It is the sort of small storefront where regulars are greeted by name and the tea arrives before it is ordered.
Where They Came From
The Saint Cloud community traces overwhelmingly to southern and central Somalia, the regions hit hardest by the collapse of 1991 and the famine and clan warfare that followed. Many spent years in the Dadaab and Kakuma camps in Kenya before resettlement, and the city’s businesses carry the names of the homeland they left: Mogadishu the capital, Shabelle the river, Hormud a word for prosperity.
Chain migration did the rest. Refugees do not arrive at random; they follow the people they already know. A cousin with a job at the plant, an uncle who had bought a house, a sister enrolled at the university, each became a reason for the next family to choose Saint Cloud over a hundred other American towns.
That same logic pulled families inward from New York and Texas during the 2010s, the secondary migration that turned a modest cluster of workers into one of the largest Somali communities in the state.
Saint Cloud Today
The Somali Saint Cloud of 2026 is a settled community rather than a transient one. Its members own homes and businesses, fill the classrooms of Apollo and Tech high schools, and graduate from St. Cloud State. The first generation came to work; the second is becoming teachers, nurses and shop owners in the city where they grew up.
That settlement has not been frictionless. Saint Cloud has seen organised resistance to its newest residents, from a failed 2017 effort by some local officials to halt refugee resettlement to forums that traded in misinformation. The community has lived with verbal hostility and the wearying sense of being asked, again and again, to justify its presence.
In January 2026 the tension turned acute. A large federal immigration enforcement operation swept through the Star City Mall, and hundreds of residents poured into the car park in response. In the weeks that followed, Somali restaurants and groceries reported a sharp fall in custom as customers stayed home, afraid of drawing attention. For a community that had spent thirty years earning its place, it was a hard reminder that the place still has to be defended.
And yet the markets reopen each morning, the tea is poured, the immersion classroom fills with children learning to read their grandparents’ language. Saint Cloud’s Somalis built something durable on the banks of the Mississippi, and they are not inclined to give it up.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Somalis live in Saint Cloud, Minnesota?
The 2020 census counted roughly 7,515 residents of Somali origin in Saint Cloud, close to eleven per cent of the city’s population. That made the Somalis in Saint Cloud one of the largest such communities in Minnesota by share, behind only Waite Park and Pelican Rapids.
Why did Somalis move to Saint Cloud?
The first arrivals in the early 1990s came for jobs in central Minnesota’s meatpacking and poultry plants, including Gold’n Plump. St. Cloud State University drew students, and during the 2010s a wave of secondary migration brought families from New York, Texas and elsewhere to join relatives already in Stearns County.
When did Somalis first arrive in Saint Cloud?
Somali refugees began reaching central Minnesota in the early 1990s, after Somalia’s government collapsed in 1991 and civil war drove hundreds of thousands into exile. The community in Saint Cloud stayed small until the 2010s, when its numbers climbed sharply.
Where do Somalis in Saint Cloud shop and worship?
The Islamic Center of St. Cloud, founded in 2007, is the main centre of Muslim worship. For groceries and food, the Somalis in Saint Cloud gather at places such as Mogadishu Grocery, Hormud Meat & Grocery, Midnimo, the Shabelle Business Center and the shops of Star City Mall.
What is Star City Mall in Saint Cloud?
Star City Mall is a strip mall near 33rd Avenue North and 3rd Street North that houses a number of Somali owned businesses and a mosque. In January 2026 it became the site of a high profile federal immigration enforcement operation that drew a large crowd of residents.
Does Saint Cloud teach the Somali language in schools?
Yes. In 2022 the St. Cloud school district launched what was reported as Minnesota’s first Somali language immersion programme, alongside heritage language courses for native speakers at schools such as Tech High School.
If your family’s story passed through Saint Cloud, or any of the places Somalis have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the camps of Kenya and the riverbanks of the Shabelle to the granite city on the Mississippi, to wherever you are now.