\n The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security say they are surging resources into Minnesota to investigate allegations of fraud there, including at child care centers, in the latest show of federal force in the state \u2014 home to the country\u2019s largest Somali population<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n The investigation comes weeks after ICE launched operations<\/a> in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area to specifically target undocumented Somali immigrants, precipitated by revelations about widespread fraud<\/a> against the state as well as President Donald Trump\u2019s comments that he \u201cdoesn\u2019t want\u201d Somalis in the country.\n <\/p>\n \n The stepped-up effort also comes just days after YouTube content creator Nick Shirley<\/a>, who has created anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim videos in the past, posted a viral video in which he claimed to find widespread fraud at Somali-run child care centers. The video<\/a>, which includes limited evidence for the creator\u2019s allegations, has received more than 2 million views on YouTube as of Tuesday morning and was retweeted by Vice President JD Vance and former Department of Government Efficiency le\ufeff<\/strong>ader Elon Musk.\n <\/p>\n \n On Tuesday, Shirley told CNN\u2019s Whitney Wild he is \u201c100% sure\u201d the allegations in his video are true. A man whose research was featured in the video told CNN he obtained all of the information from publicly available websites and that it was not given to him by Republican politicians. CNN is looking into Shirley\u2019s claims.\n <\/p>\n \n One law enforcement official told CNN the buildup of DHS agents in Minneapolis on Monday, including visits to some 30 businesses, was due in part to the video.\n <\/p>\n \n US Health and Human Services has frozen all child care payments to the state of Minnesota, Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O\u2019Neill<\/a> said on X Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n \n In addition to demanding a state audit of the Minnesota day care centers featured in the video, O\u2019Neill said the agency would now require justification and receipts or photo evidence for all payments to states from the department\u2019s <\/em>Administration of Children and Families.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cFunds will be released only when states prove they are being spent legitimately,\u201d O\u2019Neill said.\n <\/p>\n \n Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler announced<\/a> Monday that agency funding to Minnesota would be suspended to \u201cinvestigate $430 million in suspected PPP fraud across the state.\u201d She did not say whether that investigation into the Covid-era Paycheck Protection Program<\/a> involved any businesses seen in Shirley\u2019s video.\n <\/p>\n \n Responding to a post on X <\/a>about the alleged fraud, Vance \u2014 increasingly at the forefront of the administration\u2019s anti-immigrant rhetoric<\/a> \u2014 said, \u201cthey\u2019re stealing both money and political power from Minnesotans.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz<\/a> said Tuesday that his administration has spent years cracking down on fraud, by \u201creferring cases to law enforcement, shutting down and auditing high-risk programs.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Walz also asked the state legislature for more authority to take aggressive action, a spokesperson for the governor told CNN.\n <\/p>\n \n FBI Director Kash Patel also said<\/a> the bureau had already surged resources to Minnesota even \u201cbefore the public conversation escalated online.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n By Monday, DHS began posting videos<\/a> showing agents from Homeland Security Investigations entering what it called \u201csuspected fraud sites,\u201d as some members of the state legislature demanded a new investigation.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIf true, the revelations \u2026 highlight obvious misuse of taxpayer dollars and raise serious questions about the oversight and integrity of programs aimed to help children,\u201d said a Monday letter<\/a> signed by 30 Republican state senators.\n <\/p>\n \n Here\u2019s what we know about the investigations and the viral video.\n <\/p>\n \n What officials called a surge of federal resources follows a viral YouTube video by Shirley, a 23-year-old self-styled independent journalist who posts content on social media with a conservative bent.\n <\/p>\n \n In the video posted Friday, Shirley visits and tries to enter several child care centers in Minnesota he suggests are not actually operational, although he claims they\u2019re receiving government funding through the state\u2019s Child Care Assistance Program<\/a>, or CCAP, which provides child care funds for low-income families.\n <\/p>\n \n Shirley does not specify the days when he visited most of the centers, which he claimed were Somali-run, saying only he visited one at \u201cmidday.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n CNN is looking into the centers identified in the video and has reached out to several of them. The video also shows Shirley escorted out of one building by police after reports he was trespassing and harassing people.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhile we have questions about some of the methods that were used in the video, we do take the concerns that the video raises about fraud very seriously,\u201d Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families Commissioner Tikki Brown said in a Monday news conference, CNN affiliate KARE reported<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n A spokesperson for Walz told CNN two of the centers featured in the video were closed. But a Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families spokesperson later clarified that one of them \u2013 Quality Learning Center \u2013 ultimately decided to remain open, according to The Minnesota Star Tribune<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Ibrahim Ali, a manager at Quality Learning Center who said his parents own the facility, told KARE<\/a> on Monday that Shirley\u2019s video was recorded when the business was scheduled to be closed. A sign on the door says its operating hours are 2 to 10 p.m.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThere\u2019s no fraud going on whatsoever,\u201d Ali told KARE.\n <\/p>\n \n A state licensing review<\/a> for the business from June lists several violations \u2013 including a lack of required training for some staff and inadequate documentation for medications \u2013 but nothing suggesting the business was unoccupied.\n <\/p>\n \n The state Department of Human Services says<\/a> CCAP payments to day care facilities can be withheld for fraud, but not for \u201clicensing violations alone.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n CNN tried to reach Quality Learning Center on Monday, but there was no answer at listed numbers.\n <\/p>\n \n It is not unusual for child care centers to keep their doors locked or to require a key card for entry due to safety concerns, according to Clare Sanford, the vice president of government and community relations for the Minnesota Child Care Association<\/a>. And most child care centers would be especially wary of allowing someone filming to enter due to concerns about children\u2019s privacy, she said.\n <\/p>\n \n CCAP funding \u2014 the kind of funding Shirley says is being stolen \u2014 is based on the eligible children enrolled at a facility, not its total capacity.\n <\/p>\n \n Child care centers face strict regulations in Minnesota, Sanford told CNN. Under the law, each licensed center should be visited at least once a year by an unannounced licensor, who spends hours running through a checklist of roughly 400 items, she explained.\n <\/p>\n \n The video does not address those regulations. Its explosive impact is one example of the growing power of the right-wing media ecosystem, largely fueled by independent creators whom the president has favored over traditional news networks. Shirley was invited to speak with Trump<\/a> at the White House in October, part of a roundtable discussion on Antifa<\/a> with other conservative online creators. He previously filmed a video at the Capitol attack<\/a> on January 6, 2021, a look at \u201cdeported migrant scammers in NYC,\u201d<\/a> and an interview with Attorney General Pam Bondi<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Whitney Phillips<\/a>, an associate professor of information politics and media politics at the University of Oregon, says she has \u201ca hard time imagining the FBI or any government agency under Trump surging resources to a particular area if a left-leaning independent journalist made similar kinds of accusations.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But \u201cthe government isn\u2019t being steered in any directions it doesn\u2019t want to go,\u201d she added. \u201cRight wing influencers give the government a reason to do what they were already planning on doing.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n A law enforcement official told CNN the investigations announced Monday were spurred in part by the video and cover investigations into both immigration and fraud.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cFraud that steals from taxpayers and robs vulnerable children will remain a top FBI priority in Minnesota and nationwide,\u201d Patel said in a post on X.<\/a> \u201cThe FBI believes this is just the tip of a very large iceberg. We will continue to follow the money and protect children, and this investigation very much remains ongoing.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Officials at DHS have announced their own investigation into alleged fraud.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cDHS is on the ground in Minneapolis, going DOOR TO DOOR at suspected fraud sites,\u201d said the agency on X, along with a video of people in jackets marked \u201cPolice – HSI.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Neither agency said in their posts whether any arrests had been made in the latest crackdown.\n <\/p>\n \n Five Republicans in the state legislature are calling on Walz to resign.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cPeople in our districts raise this issue constantly. It is the number one issue we hear about,\u201d they said in a statement<\/a> Monday. \u201cThey want to know why nobody is being held accountable. They want to know when somebody is going to fix it. And they want to know why the governor isn\u2019t resigning.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Speaker of the House Lisa Demuth said the chamber\u2019s Fraud Prevention Committee has been investigating<\/a> allegations of fraud regarding CCAP funding for months.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cNo one\u2019s lost their job,\u201d Demuth said<\/a> in a Monday news conference. \u201cNo one has been publicly disciplined in any way.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The state\u2019s child care auditors refer an average of five cases a year to law enforcement for criminal investigation, the Department of Human Services said in a report<\/a> presented to the House committee in February.\n <\/p>\n \n Authorities have targeted fraud in the state previously, including in July, when the FBI raided five businesses in the Twin Cities which had allegedly committed Medicaid housing assistance fraud, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n Half or more of the roughly $18 billion in Medicaid funds that supported 14 Minnesota-run programs since 2018 may have been stolen due to fraud, a federal prosecutor said on December 18, according to The Associated Press<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe magnitude cannot be overstated,\u201d First Assistant US Attorney Joe Thompson said. \u201cWhat we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It\u2019s staggering, industrial-scale fraud.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Walz accused Thompson of pulling the $9 billion figure out of thin air.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cYou should be equally outraged about one dollar or whatever that number is, but they\u2019re using that number without the proof behind it,\u201d Walz said in a December 19 news conference, according to KARE<\/a>. \u201cTo extrapolate what that number is for sensationalism, or to make statements about it, it doesn\u2019t really help us.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI am accountable for this, and more importantly, I am the one that will fix it,\u201d Walz added.\n <\/p>\n \n The wide-reaching investigations into fraud against the state build on previous investigations into fraud related to Covid-19 relief programs under the Biden administration.\n <\/p>\n \n Most of the outrage regarding allegations of fraud in the Somali community has focused on Feeding Our Future<\/a>, a nonprofit prosecutors say falsely claimed to be providing meals to needy children during the Covid-19 pandemic. Federal charges were brought against dozens of people \u2014 the vast majority of them Somali \u2014 beginning in 2022.\n <\/p>\n \n A raft of state audits into lax oversight of Minnesota funds was dismissed by Walz, the former Democratic vice presidential nominee, CNN reported last year<\/a>. This came amid allegations the Somali community\u2019s strong support for \u2014 and contributions to \u2014 Democrats helped shield them from scrutiny.\n <\/p>\n \n An early investigation by the Minnesota Department of Education into alleged fraud by Feeding Our Future was stymied in part by a lawsuit filed by the organization and its founder, Aimee Bock \u2014 who is not Somali \u2014 alleging the investigation was discriminatory. She later voluntarily dropped the suit a week after federal agents raided her home and the nonprofit\u2019s offices.\n <\/p>\n \n Bock was later convicted<\/a> of seven federal charges, including bribery. She has not yet been sentenced, but a judge denied her request for a new trial.\n <\/p>\n \n Thompson, the lead federal prosecutor in the case, said authorities have recovered only about $60 million of the $250 million stolen in the Feeding Our Future conspiracy, according to the AP.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI hear they ripped off \u2014 Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars,\u201d Trump said. \u201cBillions. Every year, billions of dollars, and they contribute nothing.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The fraud allegations \u2014 producing more than 40 convictions in the Feeding Our Future case alone \u2014 have proved a lightning rod for Trump\u2019s invectives against Somalis. The president has long railed against Minnesota\u2019s Somali diaspora, the vast majority of whom are US citizens. Around 84,000 people of Somali descent live <\/strong>in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, many of whom resettled after fleeing a bloody and lasting civil war in their home country.\n <\/p>\n \n His attention to Somali immigrants and Americans of Somali descent date to his first presidential term, when he included Somalia on a travel ban alongside other Muslim-majority nations.\n <\/p>\n \n Although state leaders have rejected the label, the Trump administration calls Minnesota a \u201csanctuary jurisdiction<\/a>.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cYou\u2019ll always come back to these sanctuary jurisdictions, where you\u2019ll find them hiding in plain sight and using those sanctuary protections to employ, you know, not only illegal aliens, but conduct criminal fraud, just like you\u2019re seeing right now,\u201d ICE acting director Todd Lyons said Tuesday on Fox News<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n US Rep. Ilhan Omar<\/a>, a naturalized citizen who came to the country from Somalia as a refugee, has been a frequent target of the president\u2019s ire.\n <\/p>\n \n Earlier in December, Trump said<\/a> Omar and \u201cher friends\u201d shouldn\u2019t be allowed to serve as members of Congress. He also called Somalis in Minnesota \u201cgarbage\u201d who should \u201cgo back to where they came from.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhen they come from hell, and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don\u2019t want \u2018em in our country,\u201d Trump said in a cabinet meeting this month. Vance loudly rapped his fist on the conference table in support.\n <\/p>\n \n Somalis and their advocates, however, point out the group convicted of fraud does not reflect the entire community.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe Somali community in the Twin Cities is overwhelmingly made up of hardworking families, small business owners, healthcare workers, students, and taxpayers who contribute every day to Minnesota\u2019s economy and civic life,\u201d Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relation\u2019s Minnesota chapter, told CNN in an email.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThere\u2019s a few bad apples, you know, that committed crimes and broke the law, \u201d Kamali Ali, a 39-year-old who came to the US from Somalia as a child, previously told CNN<\/a> after the ICE operation targeting Somalis was announced. \u201cBut at the same time, you can\u2019t do a collective punishment.\u201d\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security say they are surging resources into Minnesota to investigate allegations of fraud there, including at child care centers, in the latest show of federal force in the state \u2014 home to the country\u2019s largest Somali population. The investigation comes weeks after ICE launched operations in the Minneapolis-St. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Alleged-fraud-in-Minnesota-day-cares-What-we-know-about.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15222,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15220\/revisions\/15222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Quality](\"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/still-22236169-48189-667-still.jpg\")
\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n DHS and FBI say they are investigating fraud
\n<\/h2>\n![\"Minnesota](\"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ap25280559450652.jpg\")
\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"First](\"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ap25352686788038.jpg\")
\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n Dozens arrested in previous fraud scandal
\n<\/h2>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/gettyimages-1425603995.jpg\")
\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n President has long-standing grudge against Somalis
\n<\/h2>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"