WASHINGTON (DPA, NYTIMES) - United States President Donald Trump did not name the lawmakers he denounced as " 'progressive' Democrat Congresswomen who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe."

"Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came," he said in a series of tweets on Sunday (July 15).

In recent days, Mr Trump has disparaged several first-year House Democrats - Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota - who are widely known as "the squad."

The four freshmen lawmakers fired back at Mr Trump on Twitter.

All four of them are women of colour; all but one are US-born.

Like Mr Trump, Ms Ocasio-Cortez is from New York City; Ms Pressley was born in Cincinnati and Ms Tlaib was born in Detroit. Ms Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia; her family fled the country amid civil war when she was a child, and she became a US citizen as a teenager. All four women won election to Congress in 2018.

Ms Omar has been vocal about her life as a refugee who fled Somalia and eventually settled in America, only to be disappointed with the country she found. More than any of the others in her freshman group, Ms Omar - one of the first two Muslim women in Congress along with Ms Tlaib - has forcefully used her personal story to make the argument that loving America does not require an acceptance of its shortcomings.

"I grew up in an extremely unjust society, and the only thing that made my family excited about coming to the United States was that the United States was supposed to be the country that guaranteed justice to all," Ms Omar recently said.

"So, I feel it necessary for me to speak about that promise that's not kept."

After Mr Trump's tweets on Sunday, she said: "As Members of Congress, the only country we swear an oath to is the United States."

Others were as caustic.

Ms Pressley said in a statement that "it should come as no surprise that a man who has made it his goal to dehumanise and rip apart immigrant families would so brazenly display the racism that drives his policies."

Ms Tlaib warned Trump in a tweet, "I am fighting corruption in OUR country. . . . Keep talking, you'll be out of the WH soon."

Ms Ocasio-Cortez sent a string of tweets defiantly addressing the president. "You are angry because you can't conceive of an America that includes us," she said.

"You rely on a frightened America for your plunder."

In the House, there are at least 52 voting members who are immigrants or children of immigrants and 16 in the Senate - most of them Democrats - according to a Pew Research Center analysis from this year.

Aside from Omar, four other congresswomen were born outside the United States, but they are not thought to be the targets of Mr Trumps remarks.