Minnesota taxpayers fleeced of millions of dollars from welfare fraud and the stolen funds were sent to terrorists in Somalia.

File photo of Al-Shabaab fighters. Radio al-Andalus.

Minnesota taxpayers were fleeced of millions of dollars from welfare fraud and some of the stolen funds ended up in the hands of Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab. City Journal. Fraud is a huge problem in Minnesota and much of the fraud is coming from the states large Somali community. Minnesota's Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services, HSS, was supposed to help people gain housing, but an investigation showed the majority of claims were fraudulent. Many of the companies that were contracted to help people were just fronts and the money did not go to any people in need. The Feeding our Future company was supposed to help children and families sign up for the Federal Child Nutrition Program, but the money was funneled to founders. When confronted with the fraud, the suspects claimed "racism", but were charged anyways. One of the players in the Feeding our Future scam was also involved in an additional fraud in Minnesota's Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program, a program to help autistic children. The fraud was so broad that 1 out of 16  four year old Somali children in the state were listed as autistic. 

The cost of these frauds is estimated to be in the billions. And much of that money was sent back into Somalia. In 2023 $1.3 billion dollars were sent to Somalia as remittances, more than the budget of the government of Somalia, and much of it was ill gotten gains. Most concerning is the fact that some of the money was getting to the Somali terror group al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab is a long running terror group guilty of several very large terror attacks in the region and links to al-Qaeda and ISIS. Some of the money was sent to the group directly, while in other cases the money was taken as taxes. It is claimed that the Minnesota taxpayer is the largest funder of al-Shabaab. 

My Comment:

It's hard not to be disgusted by what these people were doing. Instead of helping their community they were sending taxpayer dollars to Somali, which is bad enough on it's own. But the idea that these taxpayers were indirectly funding one of the more notorious terror groups in the world is beyond the pale. This is going to be a huge scandal for Governor Tim Walz and the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party. 

That there was corruption at all should not have been surprising. This is how things work in the third world. But the problem is that nobody could speak out about it because the people that were doing this were Somali in origin. They are a favored group for the Democrats as they have a good get out the vote mechanism (more accurately, a voter fraud program) and they are also an immigrant community, both of which means they are progressive darlings. 

Folks were indeed of being called racist and that's one of the reasons why folks weren't charged until now. But much of it is also because of willful ignorance on the part of State and National figures in the Democratic Party. You can't tell me that Governor Tim Walz and Representative Ilhan Omar didn't know, as Omar directly lobbied Walz for more money from this program. 

The fact that the money ended up in the hands of al-Shabaab should not have been surprising at all. The terror group gains some money from direct donations, but that's probably not where the majority of the money was coming from. Instead, the majority of it was from taxation. Much like the cartels in Mexico, al-Shabaab was demanding a cut from the people that were receiving remittances gathered from the fraud. The money gets there from "hawalas", informal trade networks that avoid any tracing as it avoids actual banks. The terrorists help facilitate the movement of money and they also take bribes and taxes from Somali citizens. 

And the money they collected? It went to violence. Al-Shabaab is currently launching a major offensive that is threatening to take the capital of the country, Mogadishu. They actually have taken a large portion of Southern Somalia and control much o the countryside there. The fighting this year alone has killed around 1000 people, and that number is just going to go up. Were it not for this fraud, things might still be bad, al-Shabaab has a large tax base now, but they would not be doing as well as they are now. 

All of this is infuriating to me. The idea that there was going to be major fraud in welfare programs targeting the Somali community in Minnesota was something that should have been obvious for everyone. The idea that the money coming out of Minnesota would be funding al-Shabaab should also not have been surprising.

So why didn't the Democrats see this coming? Well, some of them obviously did. I have no doubt that Ilhan Omar was aware of what was happening and didn't care. But the rank and file people suffer from pathological empathy, where they sympathize with foreigners over their own people. To them, pointing out the obvious is racist because everyone is good at heart and folks are products of their environment, not their DNA. They fully bought into the tabula rosa/blank slate ideology, which leads to them getting burned from things like this. 

This should have major political implications for the Democrats in Minnesota. Minnesota is a blue state but it's on the verge of being a swing state, like Wisconsin. Indeed, the Somali community is the main reason why it's not a swing state, along with other immigrant groups. Folks are going to be disgusted like this and it could lead to Tim Walz, who is up for election next year, losing to his Republican challenger. That could be optimistic on my part, but I do think this scandal will have legs. 

Of course, I don't think it will lead to long term changes, even if Tim Walz loses. At best, we will see what we saw in Virginia, where Glenn Youngkin used a similar scandal, the trans bathroom issue, to propel himself into power. But then the GOP lost the state as soon as the next election as the issue was no longer relevant. Though Minnesota is close to being a swing state, it's not there yet and things might have to get worse than massive fraud being used to fund a foreign terror group to change it, if change is even possible at this point. 

I also have major fears for my own state, Wisconsin. I live in an area with Somali refugees, and though they are just another group of people to me, some good, some bad, most in the middle, I do worry that the community here would be doing some of the same things. The idea that my tax dollars could be going to fund an Islamic terror group is, quite frankly, disgusting. It's horrifying to me...