The Trump administration, in recent months, has latched onto news of a large-scale public benefit fraud scandal to carry out immigration raids and harsher policies targeting Minnesota’s large Somali migrant community.

Federal charges have been filed against 98 people accused of embezzlement of public funds and — as Attorney General Pam Bondi stressed on Monday — 85 of the defendants are “of Somali descent.”

Fifty-seven people have already been convicted in the scheme to divert $300 million in public grants intended to distribute free meals to children — but the meals never existed, prosecutors said.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is a microcosm of the immigration fraud in our system,” Vice President JD Vance posted on X.

“Politicians like it because they get power. Welfare cheats like it because they get rich. But it’s a zero-sum game, and they’re stealing both money and political power from Minnesotans.”

Investigations mount

Republican elected officials and federal prosecutors accuse local Democratic authorities of turning a blind eye to numerous warnings because the fraud involved Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest in the country with around 80,000 members.

“When whistleblowers raised concerns, they were told that they shouldn’t say anything out of fear of being called racist or Islamophobic, or because it was going to hurt the political constituency of the governor and the ruling party, the Democrats here,” state representative Kristin Robbins, a Republican who is running for governor, told AFP.

Democratic Governor Tim Walz — former vice president Kamala Harris’s unsuccessful running mate in 2024 — rejects the accusation.

While the case became public in 2022, prosecutors ramped it up again this year with hotly politicised revelations.

Another Republican candidate for governor, state House Speaker Lisa Demuth, told AFP the case is “finally getting the attention that it’s needed.”

Related

Right-leaning YouTube content creator Nick Shirley reignited interest in the case over the holidays with a video that he claims shows daycare centres siphoning public money.

The video — which blew up on X with 127 million views and played repeatedly on Fox News — resonated with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) circles, who are opposed to what they deem to be overly generous social and immigration policies.

The Trump administration responded to the outcry immediately, with Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin telling Fox News that hundreds of investigators were targeting local businesses in Minneapolis.