We've spilled a lot of pixels, justifiably so, on the whole Minneapolis Somali community daycare fraud issue. While we're delighted to see Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Justice Department looking into these allegedly bogus facilities, it's also important to step into the Wayback machine and remember that this has been going on since at least 2015. A video from 2015, reportedly used in a 2018 fraud prosecution, shows parents dropping off kids at one of these daycare centers, then leaving with them moments later.
This is from a 2018 Minnesota criminal prosecution against Somali daycare fraudsters.
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 29, 2025
In surveillance video, Somali parents would take their kids to the daycare, check them in, and then leave with them moments later.
The owners of the daycare would then bill the state for a… pic.twitter.com/oXgbl2qtYj
The post concludes:
The owners of the daycare would then bill the state for a full day of childcare-- and give the parents kickback payments for being in on the fraud.
Somali fraudsters have been stealing from taxpayers for years and it's clear that the entire Somali community is in on it.
A local (Minneapolis) news story from 2018 presents some startling details:
Minnesota lawmakers are scheduling a hearing for Tuesday after the Fox 9 Investigators exposed daycare fraud that could be costing taxpayers millions of dollars and some of that money could be making its way to terrorists overseas.
Carry-on suitcases filled with as much as a million dollars in cash are regularly leaving on flights from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to the Middle East. Last year alone, government agents determined the money transfers amounted to over a $100 million. They believe a sizeable amount is coming from fraud in the state's childcare assistance program, which offers government subsidies to low-income families.
At least 10 daycare centers are currently under active investigation for overbilling the state. Most of those centers are owned by Somali immigrants. Members of the community told Fox 9 that the fraud is widespread. It's believed some of the funds are being sent in the form of remittance payments to relatives in their homeland. Investigators also believe terrorist groups are demanding a cut of the money when it arrives overseas.
It all has a familiar ring to it.
Read More: That Didn't Age Well: What Walz Said About Child Care Providers in 2024 Comes Back to Haunt Him
Watch: DHS and ICE Investigators Going Door to Door to Crack Down on Suspected Minneapolis Scammers
Part of the problem lies in the relocation of Somali "refugees" to, of all places, Minnesota. Minnesota has, for years, been a state that boasted of its generous social-welfare benefits. The state seems to have also operated on a high-trust basis when administering these programs, but then, it took in a huge influx of people from a low-trust society.
The implications of that are huge. It's the social equivalent of a biological event, an invasive species (like, say, cane toads in Australia) enters an environment where they have no natural predators or other checks on their spread, causing all manner of problems. In this case, Minnesota accepted the United States' largest influx of immigrants from a culture that is, essentially, a zero-trust society. And those people quickly learned how to game the system.
Also in 2018, a City Journal article made this cogent point:
The case of Fozia Ali, recently sworn in as a member of the park board of an upscale Twin Cities suburb, is illustrative. Ali’s daycare center in south Minneapolis was suspected of billing the government for more than $1 million of bogus child-care services. According to Special Agent Craig Lisher, the FBI “found records that she was collecting a significant amount of money for a much larger number of children than were actually attending the center.” Ali’s case also had an international component. “We are aware that some of the funds went overseas, what she was cashing out, money from the business,” Lisher noted. He declined to specify the purpose to which the funds were put.
Ali used a phone app to register charges to the Minnesota state government while she stayed at an $800-per-night hotel in Nairobi. She pleaded guilty in March to charges of wire fraud and is serving time in federal prison. But the scam goes well beyond Ali. Though the total loss to the state’s $248 million daycare program remains to be determined, we have a serious case of deceit, obviously. But the real damage, harder to measure, is likely to be to the high-trust values of Minnesota, where newcomers can dupe the natives so easily.
If Fozia Ali wasn't a criminal defrauding the taxpayers of Minnesota and the United States, one would almost have to give her credit for chutzpah — calling in fraudulent charges while vacationing in, of all places, Kenya.
The scope and scale of this is becoming more apparent, and more disturbing, with every passing day. It has, reportedly, been going on for at least ten years. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been scammed. How many millions, even billions, were left in suitcases to end up in Somalia? And to whom were those dollars given?
When you import the Third World, you import Third World behavior. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Minneapolis, right now.
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