Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Toddy Lyons asserted that Minnesota's so-called sanctuary state laws are in part to blame for the rampant fraud being exposed in the state. He argued that those laws, ensure that fraudsters, as well as illegal immigrants, have safe havens to abuse the American taxpayers.
“There’s always a tie when it comes to sanctuary jurisdictions, where you can hide in plain sight. You see a lot of these fraudsters use a lot of sanctuary rules and sanctuary protections to enact in criminal fraud just like this,” Lyons said.
We’ve been on the ground for so long looking into these states that are conducting these type of material fraud, and when Homeland Security Investigations goes into these businesses, there is criminal activity when it comes to labor trafficking, child trafficking, human exploitation and that’s what we’re looking at up there in Minnesota. And you’ll always come back to these sanctuary jurisdictions where you’ll find them hiding in plain sight and using those sanctuary protections to employ not only illegal aliens, but to conduct criminal fraud just like you’re seeing right now.
Sanctuary cities like Minneapolis are HOTBEDS for criminal illegal alien activity.
— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) December 30, 2025
Their radical policies serve only as protections for the WORST of the worst while Americans suffer the consequences of failed leadership. pic.twitter.com/PLdd4oBBs5
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This month, massive Medicaid fraud schemes, as well as abuses tied to COVID-era meal programs and, more recently, childcare programs, have been exposed for defrauding the Minnesota government and taxpayers out of billions of dollars. Many of those implicated were Somali immigrants, as the Trump administration declared that significant portions of the immigrant community in cities like Minneapolis possessed fraudulent immigration documents.
In response, agents from the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE and Border Patrol, have flooded these cities to crack down on illegal immigration while also investigating organizations accused of fraudulently billing the state government.
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