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A surge of federal officers in Minnesota is focusing on allegations of fraud involving day care centers run by Somali residents in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, according to federal and state officials. The announcements by senior Trump administration officials came after a right-wing influencer posted a video alleging the centers had committed up to $100 million in fraud, prompting renewed scrutiny from both regulators and investigators.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel both said the federal effort is expanding in Minnesota this week. Noem posted on social media that officers were “conducting a massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud,” and Patel said the intent was to “dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs.”
Minnesota’s commissioner of the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, Tikki Brown, said at a Monday news conference that state regulators took the influencer’s allegations seriously. Brown’s comments placed the allegations inside an ongoing oversight posture from state authorities, even as the federal focus sharpened around child care.
The federal move also aligns with President Donald Trump’s broader framing of immigration enforcement in Minnesota. The Associated Press said Trump has previously linked his administration’s immigration crackdown against Minnesota’s large Somali community to a series of fraud cases involving government programs, in which most defendants have roots in East Africa.
The Associated Press described Minnesota as having been in the spotlight for years due to fraud cases tied to Medicaid and other state-run, federally funded programs. That includes a massive $300 million pandemic fraud case involving the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, prosecutors said, with defendants accused of exploiting a program intended to provide food for children.
Under a separate part of the state’s fraud history, the Associated Press said that in 2022, during President Joe Biden’s administration, 47 people were charged in a Medicaid fraud case and that the number of defendants later grew to 78. The AP also said 57 people have been convicted so far, either after pleading guilty or after losing at trial.
According to the Associated Press, many cases have involved defendants of Somali descent, and it said prosecutors have investigated numerous other fraud matters in addition to the newer child-care allegations. In news interviews and press releases over the summer, prosecutor Joe Thompson estimated the total loss from all fraud cases could exceed $1 billion, and earlier this month a federal prosecutor alleged that half or more of roughly $18 billion in federal funds supporting 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen.
The Associated Press also said Trump’s immigration enforcement in Minnesota has focused on the Somali community in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, which it described as the largest in the country. It reported that Trump labeled Minnesota Somalis as “garbage” and said he did not want them in the U.S., while noting that about 84,000 of the roughly 260,000 Somalis in the U.S. live in Minneapolis-St. Paul and that most are U.S. citizens.
In the legal and political responses that followed, Republicans have argued fraud will not be tolerated under Democratic state leadership. The Associated Press said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told reporters fraud would not be tolerated and that his administration would work with federal partners to ensure fraud is stopped and fraudsters are caught, while also pointing to an audit due by late January meant to clarify the extent of any fraud.
Democratic political figures and Somali leaders urged against blaming the entire community for actions by a small number of people. The Associated Press said Minnesota’s most prominent Somali American, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, urged people not to blame an entire community for the actions of a relative few, as the federal investigations moved from allegations into a broader enforcement push.