Imprimis by Scott W. Johnson
The massive public programs fraud committed almost entirely by Somali perpetrators has recently exploded in the national news. The controversy is centered in Minnesota, where the amount of money bilked from American taxpayers could prove to be as high as $9 billion. But the scandal is spreading to other states as well. When Ryan Thorpe and Chris Rufo published an article in the November 2025 issue of City Journal linking the fraud to the funding of Al-Shabaab—a Somali-based Sunni Islamist organization that is designated a terrorist group by several nations, including the U.S.—President Trump took notice and announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Somali immigrants. In late December, YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a 42-minute video that showed him knocking on the doors of Somali-run day care centers in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area that seemed to have no children in attendance. The video went viral, quickly garnering more than 130 million views on X and 2.5 million views on YouTube. But while this story is new to most Americans, it is anything but new to Minnesotans and others who have been paying it the attention it deserves.
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Long known for having a largely Scandinavian population, Minnesota is now home to the largest Somali population in North America, numbering roughly 100,000, most of whom are congregated in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. The seeds of this community were planted in the early 1990s, when the State Department directed thousands of refugees from Somalia’s civil war to Minnesota. Except for a dip in 2008, the immigration of Somalis into Minnesota has continued unabated, augmented by Somalis arriving from other states. The latter likely has to do with Minnesota’s generous welfare and charity policies. As Professor Ahmed Samatar of Saint Paul’s Macalester College was quoted as saying in a 2015 Washington Times story, Minnesota is “the closest thing in the United States to a true social democratic state.”
The massive fraud currently in the news was not the first controversy surrounding the Somali immigrant community. Around 2015, it proved to be a fertile source of ISIS recruits. The FBI’s Minneapolis field office devoted substantial resources to terrorism-related issues. A September 2015 report of the House Homeland Security Committee revealed that Minnesota led all other states in contributing foreign fighters to ISIS. Reviewing the public cases of 58 Americans who joined or attempted to join ISIS, it found that 26 percent of them came from Minnesota. Of ten Minnesota Somalis charged with seeking to join ISIS in Syria, six pleaded guilty and three were convicted at trial in June 2016.
During the trial of the three Somalis who contested the charges, it became clear, primarily from recordings introduced into evidence, that although they gave the outward appearance of American assimilation, they hated America. They took advantage of educational and employment opportunities and moved into and out of the workforce at will. At one time, all three worked at a UPS facility in a leafy Saint Paul suburb, where they enjoyed watching ISIS videos of beheadings during their breaks.
More:
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/learning-from-minnesotas-somali-fraud-scandal/
