There is a massive Somali community that has been transplanted from Somalia and elsewhere into the US state of Minnesota. There have long been suspicions that large parts of this community were considerably less than honest, that this community voted tribally for other Somali heritage political candidates and used the political system for communal advantages over other Americans.
Commentators such as Anthony Brian Logan (link below this piece) have claimed that they have been pointing out years the problems in Minnesota’s politics (which is mostly Democrat) and the problems involving the Somali community but it is only very recently that global attention has been paid to what is looking like a massive fraud scandal involving Minnesota’s Somalis. This story went globally viral after conservative commentator Nick Shirley decided to take a camera and knock on the doors of the many Somali run children’s nurseries (daycare to the Americans). What Mr Shirley found was a whole host of nurseries with no children at times when it could be reasonably expected that there would be children present.
It appears that Mr Shirley has uncovered what could be a childcare related fraud that may have resulted in billions, yes billions, of US taxpayer dollars being defrauded from the US government. This recently uncovered scandal may even implicate major Democrat politicians in Minnesota. There are various accusations going around that these Democrat politicians were either too incompetent to make themselves aware of the fraud and the scale of it or turned a blind eye to it in order to keep the Somalis onside and continuing to vote Democrat or were in on the fraud themselves. Whether these accusations will end up being proven only time and more investigation will tell but what is increasingly clear is that Minnesota almost certainly has a major fraud problem involving Somalis availing themselves liberally of US government funding that they should not be getting. Somalis involved in this fraud were getting money from the US taxpayer and not spending it on the services that this money was intended to fund. There are even allegations being voiced that some of this fraudulently acquired money ended up in the pockets of the Somali Islamic terror group Al Shabab in Somalia.
I’m not going to go all in with support for Mr Shirley as he’s only recently come to my attention and could be a nutter or a grifter or something similar for all I know, I don’t know enough about him to give him my unqualified support. However Mr Shirley’s coverage of the nurseries with no children but lots of taxpayer money has gripped those concerned about public sector waste and fraud. It helps Mr Shirley’s credibility that the fraud allegations he has made about the Somali community in Minnesota have also been highlighted by others as has the Somali communal pressures put on politicians from that US state.
At this stage we do not know the actual confirmed fiscal figures concerning these frauds centred on Minnesota’s Somali community but even if it is not in the billions it’s going to be many millions of US dollars that should and could have been spent on something more worthwhile than going into the pockets of Somali fraudsters. At a time when many Americans are suffering from fiscal burdens such as debt and cost of living increases and (in some States) a crushing tax and regulatory regime that stifles businesses, to see so much money that they’d paid out in taxation going to Somali fraudsters must be galling to say the least.
I very much doubt that the Minnesota frauds involving Somalis is a problem confined to Minnesota. There’s been a growing community of Somalis in the USA that has been present in the USA since the 1990’s with many of them arriving as refugees from the turmoil that seems to have constantly gripped Somalia. Whilst the major concentration of Somalis is in Minnesota there are other concentrations in Washington state and in Ohio.
It remains to be seen whether there are similar levels of Somali run fraud in Washington state and Ohio or elsewhere but it would certainly merit an investigation by the US federal government into how funding intended to assist Somalis into integrating into American society have actually been spent. What’s pretty obvious to me is that the fraud problem involving America Somalis is massive and when even a liberal leaning newspaper like the New York Times calls the Minnesota frauds ‘staggering in its scale and brazenness’ then you know the problem is really really big. What should concern people and especially Americans is that this fraud might not be just fiscal and based around defrauding public monies but there also might be other frauds mixed in with this one such as voter fraud. We could be looking at a situation where this fraud is not just money but one which attacks electoral integrity. I would not be surprised to later find out that eyes might have been turned away from the shenanigans in the Somali community because the Somali ‘community leaders’ were getting the vote out, whether legitimate or illegitimate, for Democrats or other politicians who are favourable to Somali community interests.
The fallout from the continual and ongoing revelations about Minnesota’s fraud loving Somali community has been huge. Not only is it focusing attention in America and elsewhere on actual and potential Somali run fraud plots and on Democrat Governor of Minnesota Tim Walz handling of it, it is also affecting how the federal government deal with Somalis. President Donald Trump has according to the New York Times started to take action against Somalis and has removed some visa exemptions that allowed hundreds of Somalis to reside in the USA. It is possible in my view that because of the massive scale of the scandal and the financial sums involved that President Trump may try to impose further restrictions on Somalis who wish to enter or live in the USA.
It would be reasonable to assume that in the USA the problem with fraud committed by Somalis or involving the Somali community there, is a massive and deep seated problem. I would not be surprised to find out some time in the future, that other places where there is a concentration of Somalis, to be places with similar frauds. Whilst not all Somalis are fraudsters and some have integrated well into Western societies such as the USA and UK, the community itself does pose us an awful lot of problems. Somalis are very tribal and it would not be unthinkable that such a tribal society has loyalty not to the nation that they live in and are ostensibly citizens of, but to their own tribe or sub tribe. Whilst individuals within Somali culture can be responsible, honest, hard working and who embrace the Western mindset there are a great many others in that community who see no wrong in religious extremism, fraud, theft, random violence, misogyny, disloyalty, dishonesty and much more. I’ve known very decent Somalis but I would be very loathe to extend that judgement of decent Somalis I’ve known to the culture of Somalis as a whole.
One of the questions that the uncovering of the Somali daycare fraud in Minnesota and the revelations of the sheer enormous scale of it is this: Could such a system of large scale fraud involving Somalis be happening elsewhere in places like the UK? I would not bet against this phenomena not happening in the UK. This is why I say that this could be the case. A high proportion of Somalis are clustered in London with the clustering being a factor in the ability of the Somalis to create the Minnesota fraud scandal. According to the UK Office of National Statistics the 2021 Census showed that a greater proportion of Somalis were economically inactive and classed as students, carers in the home and the mysterious statistical category ‘other’. Somalis are only slightly ahead and then not by much when it comes to sickness benefits. Somalis are also not highly represented in the self-employment states with less than 10% of them working this way.
It’s not just benefits and a culture of acceptance of such benefits without shame because the rest of the tribe does it that is similar to Minnesota. In Britain as in Minnesota there was a high number of Somalis in public housing. In Minneapolis according to Fox News there is almost an entire public housing estate occupied by Somalis. In the UK according to the Office of National Statistics 72% of Somalis live in public housing of some sort or another.
We already have a Somali community that is somewhat insular and unintegrated into British society which has accepted gleefully accepted benefits and who are disproportionally occupying social housing. This community has, on the whole not been economically useful or contributory to the nation. These are similar conditions of existence between British resident Somalis and US resident Somalis that helped to created and sustain the Covid era childcare and other frauds in Minnesota. With such similarities it would not be a big leap of the imagination to believe that similar frauds, although maybe fiscally less high in amount than the Somali fraud figures from the USA, are occurring in the United Kingdom. It is certainly a possibility that requires further investigation by journalists and those few politicians we have that are concerned with welfare fraud committed by those from overseas. I hope such deep probing investigations of the Somali community and its possible actions do occur as we need to know if we have a similar problem (which is quite possible) to that in Minnesota and if we do have such a problem how big is it and how can it be stopped?
Links
NYT article
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/us/fraud-minnesota-somali.html
Anthony Brian Logan on the Somali empty nursery scandal
UK Office of National Statistics on Somalians in the UK
Fox News article on Somalis in Minneapolis
https://www.foxnews.com/us/inside-little-mogadishu-minnesotas-somali-community-its-push-belonging