Minnesota is on top of everyone’s mind once again for all of the wrong reasons. The Somali fraud crisis is being reported as up to $1 billion, but that is just the fraud that is being charged right now. Minnesota U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson has already said that our fraud problem breaks into the billions of dollars, and whistleblowers within the Minnesota Department of Human Services predict the fraud will reach up to $6.5 billion just in the time that Tim Walz has been in office.
The crazy part about all of this is that none of this is new.
Since the Christopher Rufo report with City Journal dropped, it has simply brought things to a new level of scrutiny as we reevaluate our immigration policies going forward.
To put it plainly, it has become clear that the Somali experiment in America has failed, just like the failed state of Somalia, and we must begin reversing course.
Many are familiar with Feeding Our Future, the nation’s single largest COVID fraud scheme that defrauded a quarter billion dollars from taxpayers. But the Somali fraud problem actually started with the Minnesota Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) in 2013.
Surveillance videos of these Somali-run daycare centers showed children showing up for minutes, then leaving with envelopes of kickbacks while charging for a full day’s worth of child care. Everyone seemed to be in on the fraud, not just a few bad apples collecting millions. Oftentimes, children did not show up at all. The program was defrauded of millions of dollars, with money being transferred to the United Arab Emirates.
Fast forward to 2018. The problem was never adequately addressed, and by this point, whistleblowers had predicted up to $100 million in fraud occurring annually in the program. More importantly, they accused the program of funding terrorism in Somalia, which is what made the Rufo report so explosive for national media attention. We are talking about millions of dollars in cash being stuffed into carry-on suitcases and making its way to the Horn of Africa, all made possible by the Minnesota taxpayer. This phenomenon had begun just as Tim Walz entered office.
This was the blueprint that worked for Minnesota Somali fraudsters. It became an open secret that starting a daycare center was a license to print money. So when COVID hit in 2020, that same blueprint ballooned to the tune of billions. Feeding Our Future alone accounted for at least $250 million, and you guessed it, they used the exact same blueprint as CCAP. This fraud expanded across numerous other agencies.
Fake billing, even fake names and birthdates, all to defraud the same taxpayers who extended a helping hand to war-torn refugees seeking a better life in America.
And get this, many Somali politicians helped facilitate it, or are likely in on the fraud themselves. U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-MN, introduced the legislation that ultimately allowed Feeding Our Future to fleece millions from taxpayers. She later argued that a lack of guardrails was to blame, even though she introduced the legislation herself.
State Senator Omar Fateh introduced legislation in the Minnesota State Senate that would have directly benefited his wife’s nonprofit. Minneapolis City Council member Jamal Osman had his wife’s nonprofit shut down for serving as a fraudulent shell organization. That nonprofit was then handed over to two other individuals who later committed $12 million in food fraud.
Somalis from around the country often make their way to Minnesota, as Omar Fateh did. Born in Washington, D.C., he came to Minnesota because this is where Somalis hold the most concentrated political power. It is where influence can be exerted over laws to disproportionately benefit a single community and keep the gravy train moving.
They pass these laws, their friends get rich, and when you call it out, you are labeled a racist. That has been their blueprint. It is all by design.
Do not get me wrong. The fraud on its face is bad enough, but now let us look at the hard numbers behind the Somali community in Minnesota:
- Poverty: 58%
- Food stamps: 42%
- Unemployed: 40%
- No high school education: 41%
- Only $68 million is paid annually in taxes.
In an interview for a short documentary I did with Tyler Oliveira, a Somali business owner located in the Karmel Mall, commonly known as the Somali Mall, said that she financially supports up to 30 people back in Somalia. This is a normal practice used to help friends and family in the homeland. On its face, this is respectable, but we must acknowledge the broader reality.
Many of these businesses primarily serve other Somalis, and over half of that customer base relies on government benefits paid for by taxpayers. Again, 40% of Somalis are outright unemployed in Minnesota. When highly concentrated communities that refuse to assimilate engage in commerce funded largely through welfare programs, Minnesotans are effectively writing checks that are sent overseas through remittance payments.
In other words, even putting fraud aside, many legitimate business operations are still funded and subsidized by government dollars, with that money sent back to support Somalia, not Minnesotans.
Roughly one-third of Somalia’s GDP is produced through remittance payments from the United States.
I say this as someone who has taken every opportunity to bring the Somali community into the Republican Party. I have canvassed Somali neighborhoods, managed campaigns for Somali candidates, and even brokered the meeting that led the Minnesota Republican Party to create an official Somali Caucus. We worked to build bridges. There are incredible people in the Somali community, which is exactly why I say this with genuine sadness.
As a whole, the experiment has failed, and we must explore solutions to stop the bleeding.
So where do we begin?
- End all new immigration from Somalia: It has been 34 years since Somalis began coming to America in large numbers. For many, that still has not been long enough to assimilate. Each new wave resets the clock. Enough is enough.
- Address the fraud: As former Minnesota U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson has stated, fraud in Minnesota is in the billions of dollars. We are only charging what the public currently knows about. The Trump administration must step forward and adequately fund prosecutions and investigations to weed out bad actors and punish them to the fullest extent of the law. A precedent must be set that this will not continue.
- Tax remittances: Even under all legal standards, our tax dollars are still flowing overseas to prop up a foreign government. One-third of Somalia’s GDP comes from the United States. We must take action to deter this and recoup taxpayer dollars in the process. Minnesota Democrats have never seen a tax they did not love. Maybe this will be the first, but it must be aggressively pursued.
- Denaturalize and deport Somalis who have defrauded our government: Whether someone has abused our immigration system or our welfare system, we must seek new ways to deter bad actors from exploiting American goodwill. For too long, Americans have been taken advantage of, and toxic empathy must end.
We can reverse course on this failed experiment if we have the courage to do so. The numbers do not lie. Change must occur soon if we are to solve this epidemic, not just for our country, but for the Somalis who fled war-torn Somalia for a better life.
You cannot import the third world en masse with no plan for assimilation and expect a first-world outcome.
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