SOUTH SIOUX CITY – In a small office, Abdikadir Moalim translates work documents from English to Somali, helping a Tyson employee who needs to take off work to visit her sick mother in Africa.

Tacked to the wall is a poster of the Somali coat of arms – two leopards on either side of the country's flag. A dry erase board breaking down English vowel sounds is propped against a shelf.

Across the room, Katie Hagen checks the status of someone's refugee application. A phoned-in relative helps translate between English and Oromo, the official language of Ethiopia. 

The office is buzzing on this Sunday afternoon. The three donated couches that line the room are filled with people waiting for help submitting unemployment claims and job applications; navigating complicated immigration documents; translating legal letters from the government and emails from refugee resettlement case managers. 

"Who's next!" Moalim shouts to the chattering room. 

This rented space sits in a building where every closet and spare room is rented to a different Somali business. It’s the current headquarters of Somali Community of Siouxland, a four-person nonprofit founded by Moalim last year to help support South Sioux City's steadily growing Somali population.

"Most of my people are refugees. They don't know the language, they don't understand the policies and rules from different institutions," said Moalim, an interpreter at the Tyson plant in nearby Dakota City. "People needed direction. They never had a place to go and ask for help." 

In South Sioux City, the number of African immigrants has swelled in the past decade, nearly tripling from 330 in 2013 to 840 last year. Two out of three hail from Somalia, the easternmost country in Africa. South Sioux City, the small Nebraska part of the Sioux City metro area, is home to 13,856 residents. Nearly 1 out of every 15 residents are African immigrants.

Though still small, Nebraska’s African population has exploded, too, nearly doubling since 2010 and hitting a new high of 16,078 in 2023. Pushed out of their home countries by civil war, drought and famine, this newer wave of immigrants come to join family members. They come to find jobs and a low cost of living; somewhere quieter and smaller than typical resettlement cities like Minneapolis and Columbus, Ohio. 

And they're among the thousands of immigrants growing Nebraska's population. In 2024, international migration was the main driver of population growth, according to the latest U.S. Census estimates. An added 12,978 immigrants pushed the state's population past 2 million, as places like South Sioux City grew. 

“That kind of growth in a smaller community, and in a community where most of the foreign-born population is Latin American, that’s noticeable,” said Josie Gatti Schafer, director of the Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. “That kind of growth isn’t under the radar.” 

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South Sioux’s immigrant groups have come in waves. Before the East Africans, Tyson recruited Vietnamese and Laotian immigrants to staff its largest meatpacking plant. 

And before them, it was a wave of Latin American immigrants in the 1980s, also recruited by Tyson. Today, South Sioux is 50% Latino. 

Ed Mahon has watched all of those waves arrive during his 31 years with the South Sioux City Police Department. The arrival of Somali immigrants about 15 years ago brought new languages and an unfamiliar religion, said Mahon, now the police chief. The department would often get calls to the apartment complex where most Somalis lived. 

“We didn’t know them, and they absolutely didn’t know us,” Mahon said. “Our guys would go down there…and it seemed like the whole apartment complex would clear out and everyone would come down and surround us to see what’s going on.” 

The scene would get tense, with officers nervous about being encircled as the strangers chattered in a language they couldn’t understand. 

Six months later, Mahon remembers asking an officer: “How’s it going down there?” 

Fine, the officer replied. We got to know them, and they’ve seen how we work. Not a big deal anymore. 

In 2010, there were so few Somalis living in South Sioux that the U.S. Census didn't even designate them as a population group, instead lumping them with "other East African countries." 

But the U.S. has admitted more and more Somali refugees as residents flee a civil war raging in the country. An estimated 3 million Somalis are now displaced within Somalia and refugee camps in neighboring countries like Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. 

From 2001 to 2023, more than 111,000 Somali refugees entered the United States, according to the U.S. State Department. An estimated 2,404 Somalis live in Nebraska. 

South Sioux City's Dakota County is now home to 852 Africans, and 575 Somalis. Of Dakota County's foreign-born residents, 16.9% are African. 

Across the river in Iowa's Sioux City, 1,607 Africans live in Woodbury County. But there’s a key difference: Ethiopians and Eritrean immigrants are more likely to live in Iowa; Somalis more likely to live in Nebraska. The Sioux City metro – 144,007 total people, across three states, has three mosques. On Fridays, as many as 500 people crowd into the South Sioux mosque for noon prayers. 

"We are seeing new arrivals all the time," said Heidi Oligmueller, an immigration attorney in South Sioux for 12 years. "Someone will come to the U.S. and end up in a refugee resettlement city…they move to South Sioux. Then, they're petitioning for their family to join them." 

Often, it's jobs that attract people. Sake Barkhad, a Somali Community of Siouxland board member, was told by a friend that he should move to work at Tyson. He then told his brother to join him. Barkhad stayed because he liked the size of South Sioux – it was quieter and felt safer than Minneapolis, where he was before. 

And when Somalis move to South Sioux, they work. Nebraska's foreign-born population outpaces native-born Nebraskans in work force participation, Schafer said. They often fill high-demand, physically strenuous jobs like construction and manufacturing. About a third of foreign-born workers in Nebraska work in production, transportation and material moving, compared to just 12% of US-born workers. 

"The foreign-born labor force participation rate is higher than high....when people move here from other countries, they work at really high rates," Schafer said. "Wherever there are jobs, you should expect to see foreign-born populations there."

Job availability, paired with a lower cost of living, made South Sioux an ideal place to settle down, Moalim said. 

"We all have families back in Africa. We do want to save money, but we also like to send money back home," Moalim said. "We saw this place as an opportunity." 

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Moalim came to South Sioux by way of Ohio. He came at the suggestion of a friend, who said there was good money to be made at Tyson.

He could immediately sense the difference between his old home and new, could see what South Sioux offered and also what it lacked as compared to Columbus, Ohio, which now has the second-largest Somali population in the country.

South Sioux has a mosque, restaurants and cafes that serve as gathering spaces. Most refugee resettlement services are concentrated across the river in Iowa. But, unlike in Columbus, Ohio, there was no central organization or community center here serving Somalis, Moalim said. 

He talked with other Somali coworkers he'd met through Tyson. Let's start something, he urged. 

In February 2023, Somali Community of Siouxland held its first meeting. 

Since then, the small group has focused on filling gaps. On weekends, the office space hosts English classes. They connect newcomers with housing, sometimes just a couch to stay on until they get on their feet. They arrange rides to Omaha for green card interviews, so Moalim can help interpret. 

"What happens here on weekends is the basis of why this organization was formed," Barkhad said through an interpreter. "There are some people who cannot even write their names or their numbers...they come here." 

The group discussed cultural sensitivity with the local health department – differences like how in Somali culture, it’s considered more respectful to lower your eyes in conversation instead of direct eye contact. Or how in Islamic tradition, there are strict rules about physical contact between people of opposite genders, a belief that extends to doctors. 

They’ve acted as a middle man between schools and workplaces and Somali residents, helping to explain cultural misunderstandings and reach solutions. Recently, the school district hired three bilingual Somali community liaisons. 

Lately, open office hours on the weekends have been filled with requests to help check the status of pending refugee applications, said Hagen, a board member. 

“There’s a lot of fear with Trump coming, about things being stopped, delayed, everything,” she said. “There’s not much of an update we can give, because it’s out of our control.” 

Board members work full-time jobs in addition to their volunteer work. Since the nonprofit hasn’t yet secured grant funding, they often find themselves paying the office rent out of their own pockets.

Mahon, the police chief, has attended community meetings held by the nonprofit. He has met Somali elders and leaders, and answered questions about policing and traffic. The connections have come in handy in times of crisis, he said, like when an apartment fire broke out, and when a Somali teen was acting out in school.

Mahon has also met with Mahamud Osman, elected to City Council this year – the first-ever Somali to serve on the council. 

On South Sioux’s main drag, Somali Community of Siouxland's office sits in a cluster of buildings all housing different Somali-owned businesses. 

Down the hall, Somali women who work at Tyson and in child care centers during the week spend their weekends running clothing shops. Their tiny stores are stuffed with long dresses, tiny gold bottles of perfume, plush rugs and blankets, glittering tea sets and more. 

Steps away is Adan Restaurant and Halal Grocery Shop, serving stewed pieces of goat meat piled onto rice with a banana on the side, and icy cups of mango juice. There's a curtained-off area for women to eat separately – a tradition in some Muslim households – and a pile of prayer rugs in a carpeted corner. 

A money transfer business next door lets people send money home to family. Across the parking lot is a cafe, where men gather to play the Somali board game Taraq as they drink hot tea. 

During the week, these buildings are empty – everyone is busy with their shifts processing beef at Tyson and pork at Seaboard Triumph Foods across the river. Or they’re packaging Blue Bunny ice cream at the Wells Enterprises factory 33 miles away in Le Mars, Iowa. 

But on the weekends, the sidewalks are the town square – a place to say hello, ask about family, relax. In the parking lot, a couple stop Moalim. Can he help them translate something? 

"You're in the heart of the Somali community," Moalim said.

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