Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”
Muslims have committed giant welfare frauds all over the country, but no place has been hit as hard as Minnesota by these frauds. Somali immigrants overwhelmingly commit the frauds — the largest Somali population in the country is in Minneapolis — and while the exact cost of the fraud is not known, some investigators suggest losses in the billions. This is money that is no longer available to provide succor to Minnesota’s poor and disabled. And what is still more infuriating, much of that money is sent abroad by the local fraudsters to Somalia, where a large cut of the loot goes to the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group al-Shabaab. American taxpayers, that is, are unknowingly providing huge sums to a group linked to the very worst of Islamic terrorist groups.
Robert Spencer wrote about this here, and more on this fraud — one of so many that have been uncovered involving Somalis in Minnesota — can be found here: “Federal investigators warn Minnesota welfare fraud may have helped fund Al-Shabaab,” by Kayla Gaskins, The National News Desk, November 21, 2025:
Federal prosecutors say Minnesota is facing one of the largest welfare-fraud waves in U.S. history—schemes so widespread and lucrative that some of the stolen money may have ended up in the hands of Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organization operating in Somalia.
Correction: No, “that stolen money may have ended up in the hands of Al-Shabab” — it did end up in the terror group’s hands.
According to a recent report in City Journal, former federal counterterrorism officials believe portions of the money stolen from Minnesota’s Medicaid and social-service programs were routed overseas through informal cash-transfer networks known as hawalas. Once the funds reached Somalia, investigators say, Al-Shabaab routinely took a share—regardless of the sender’s intentions.
The allegation, described by one former investigator as a “yes, absolutely” scenario, adds a national-security dimension to a widening series of criminal cases already rattling the state.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota has charged dozens of defendants across multiple schemes, including housing-assistance fraud, pandemic child-nutrition fraud, and millions of dollars in false billing for autism therapy. Collectively, prosecutors estimate taxpayers have lost billions.
David Gaither, a former Minnesota state senator, said the scale of fraud has diverted resources away from vulnerable people, the programs were designed to help. “There are people that legitimately need those resources who are not getting them,” he said. “It’s beyond criminal.”
Minnesota is home to one of the largest Somali-American populations in the United States, and many of the defendants in the major fraud cases come from that community. Kayesh Magan, a former fraud investigator at the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and himself Somali-American, wrote last year that it is “uncomfortable and true” that nearly all defendants in the high-profile cases are Somali.
“They have taken advantage of one of the most generous countries in the world and one of the most generous states in that country,” Gaither said.
Ryan Thorpe, an investigative reporter who has examined the fraud cases, said law enforcement alone cannot keep up. “Pretty much across the board, people I spoke to said there isn’t a law-enforcement solution to this,” Thorpe said. “It’s simply playing whack-a-mole. There needs to be a policy change.”…
What kind of policy change? What about refusing to allow any welfare benefits to be sent to migrants during the first five years of their presence in the United States? Or monitoring, using Somali agents, the hawala networks by which money is transferred from America to Somalia? Or going to visit the homes where these fraudsters claim they have provided housing assistance to tenants? Or simply keeping track of the assets — houses, stocks, bank accounts — of those suspected of involvement in these frauds, noting those that are suspiciously large? Such measures won’t stop this fraud entirely, but may cut it down to a less maddening size. As of now, investigators believe that “billions of dollars” have been lost to networks of Somali fraudsters and such measures will certainly make both the fraud in Minnesota, and the transfer of funds to Somalia, more difficult. In Somalia itself, the FBI ought to have agents, preferably Somalis, on the ground, to monitor large infusions of cash into Al-Shabaab coffers.
Minnesota is the home of the Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar, the most visible member of the state’s congressional delegation, who has made herself a presence on the national scene. A Muslim, Keith Ellison, is the attorney general of Minnesota. He has prosecuted a handful of very small cases of Medicaid fraud, but has yet to show much interest in investigating the massive Minnesota fraud cases. He was secretly recorded promising to help some Somalis who he said were being investigated unnecessarily for “piddly stuff” that turned out to be a massive billion-dollar fraud.
Many local politicians, alas, are reluctant to lose the support of the Somali-American voters in the state, who vote as a bloc. Close to 100,000 Somalis now in Minnesota were born in Somalia. In addition, there are tens of thousands more Somali-Americans, born in the U.S., who are the children of those first-generation immigrants.
Now that Minnesota taxpayers have discovered that they have been scammed of what federal investigators estimate to be “billions of dollars,” in Housing Aid fraud, Pandemic Child Nutrition fraud, and Autism fraud, by Somali-Americans, and learned, too, that much of that money — hundreds of millions of dollars — was sent to the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab, will they in fury vote out Governor Tim Walz, who was asleep at the wheel during the worst of these frauds, or Attorney General Keith Ellison, who failed to grasp the size and seriousness of those frauds? David Gaither, a former state senator, who has been in the forefront of those denouncing the fraud and its link to al-Shabaab, should be encouraged to run for governor, and if he wins on a wave of taxpayer fury, his first order of business should be to clamp down on Somali fraudsters, force them to disgorge as much of their ill-gotten gains that are still reachable, deport any of those convicted of crimes back to Somalia, and charge the people running the hawala networks by which money has been transferred from Minnesota to al-Shabaab in Somalia, with supporting international terrorism. That’s what I would call a good start.
