According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 100,000 Somalis now live in the United States, and at 32,000, Minnesota has the highest Somali population in the country. “Like many Somalis, my family and I moved to the United States to flee the war in Somalia,” Dirie recalled. Her family moved to the United States in 1994 when she was 2, settling first in Pennsylvania before heading west to Minnesota during the state’s Somali boom.