Minnesota’s ‘Melting Pot’
“We are a nation of immigrants.”
We hear that a lot nowadays. It’s become the go-to phrase for those who believe that border controls are cruel and deporting violent illegal immigrants is downright un-American.
It is undeniably true that for much of American history, immigrants from all over the world staked their claim in this land of opportunity. The United States benefited monumentally from the infusion of highly motivated, finely skilled, and eternally grateful foreigners eager to immerse themselves into the American melting pot.
Ellis Island proved better than a lottery ticket. It was the starting line in the sprint for the pursuit of happiness.
Nowadays we are discovering that America’s longstanding immigration story has taken a different, less industrious and patriotic turn. Where earlier generations of immigrants came to our shores with grit, more recent arrivals specialize in grift—siphoning off America’s entitlements and diverting vast sums of taxpayer and charitable money to terrorist groups elsewhere.
The dream of making it in America may soon become a nightmare of Islamic terrorism paid for by Uncle Sam. Say what you want about the 9/11 conspirators, but aside from the hijacked planes, they paid their own ride.
The dream of making it in America may soon become a nightmare of Islamic terrorism paid for by Uncle Sam. Say what you want about the 9/11 conspirators, but aside from the hijacked planes, they paid their own ride.
This week the House Oversight Committee will hear testimony from those who have uncovered an astonishing amount of fraud in Minnesota—all involving federal monies earmarked for housing, daycare, and autism centers and mostly perpetrated by the state’s sizable Somali community. Apparently, 90 percent of those charged are from Somalia.
Many are recent arrivals who quickly adopted the Democratic Party as their ticket to American inclusion. Their political engagement is curious since it appears that many are not quite sold on America itself. Nonetheless, they have become reliable voters and donors to Democratic candidates. Minnesota congresswoman and chief Squad gadfly, Ilhan Omar, is Somali in origin.
Minnesota is returning the favor in manifold ways. The state’s newly minted state flag bears a strong resemblance to the national flag of Somalia. But looking the other way when it comes to Somali criminality is the most significant sign that this tight-knit community is appreciated in the North Star State—even though some are umbilically connected to Islamic extremism back home in Africa.
These crimes are recent—occurring since the pandemic—and were in plain view. It involves roughly $9 billion in pilfered taxpayer funds. The U.S. Department of Justice is presently prosecuting more than 90 Minnesotans—90 percent of whom are from Somalia—for gaming welfare programs that provide food, housing, childcare and treatment for children with autism.
Apparently, the Somalis were playing a game of hide the salami.
Except they left behind a mountainous paper trail of fraudulent undertakings. In 2021 alone, bogus meals that never went to feed children accounted for nearly $200 million in graft. Child daycare centers were empty of children. These newcomers to American culture seemed to know a lot about doctored attendance records and fabricated invoices.
Their most brazen act of racketeering involved a program for autistic children. One Somali woman alone bilked the federal government of $14 million. She recruited fellow Somalis to enroll their children, virtually none of whom had an autism diagnosis. Nearly 10 percent of all four-year-old Somali Minnesotans were reported to be autistic—300 percent higher than other groups!
Signing up for benefits came with privileges. Somali families received monthly cash kickbacks of approximately $300 to $1,500 per month, per child. So cocky and dependent had they become on the boondoggle, many threatened to jump to competing sham facilities unless their kickbacks were increased.
The scope of this Medicaid fraud skyrocketed from $3 million in 2018 to $399 million in 2023.
Yet, the moment any regulator, politician or journalist became suspicious, these co-conspirators knew to invoke the ironclad get-out-of-jail-free card that has defined our multicultural age: racial discrimination. Black Lives Matter served as their shield—lives mattered; moral failings did not. Politicians feared losing votes; the media rebuffed any story that cast persons of color in a negative light. Minnesota was George Floyd’s state, after all.
More distressingly, a large portion of the ill-gotten gains flowed back to Somalia. As much as 40 percent of households in the impoverished country received foreign money transfers. In 2023, for instance, American taxpayers inadvertently gifted $1.7 billion to Somalia, which dwarfed its annual governmental budget.
And some Republicans are decrying the $3 billion in aid Israel lawfully received the same year that the October 7 massacre took place!
Worse still, some of this stolen money ended up in the hands of Somalia’s homegrown al Qaeda-linked terrorist group al-Shabab.
No real surprise. Homeland Security has revealed that Minnesota leads the nation in Americans joining, or attempting to join, ISIS—of the 58 so far, nearly half are Minnesotans.
This is how we are fighting the War on Terror — by redeploying federal taxpayer money to fund enemies that seek to replace our liberal democracy with an Islamic theocracy? All for the ostensible benefit of diversity and inclusion, and to avoid accusations of racism.
Europe has been dealing with this problem far longer. In November, Sweden reported that over $100 million in public funds intended for schoolchildren were diverted to Islamists abroad. The country has become a fertile recruiting ground of radicalized Islamists. Since 2013, more than 300 Swedes have joined jihadi groups, second only to Belgium. In 2023, it was discovered that 24 former ISIS terrorists were serving as public employees in Sweden.
The German Interior Ministry recently reported that 450 Hamas members are living in Germany and actively engaged in propaganda under the cover of Palestinian activism.
George Washington University released a study detailing how Hamas has created an elaborate network of fundraising and recruitment entities through charities, NGOs, and phony businesses. All are operating openly in Western countries.
In 2024, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies reported that 30 Hamas-linked aid organizations are based in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands. Inexplicably, the European Union—and those very same countries—have long designated Hamas to be an unlawful terror outfit.
Given these Minnesota revelations, can we be very far behind?
Note: Obviously I am not accusing every single Minnesotan of Somali origin with criminal behavior. But it’s not racist to point out a strong correlation between serious crimes and a significant percentage of those sharing the same ethnicity or race as the perpetrators.
Ben Affleck came across as a buffoon in a 2014 debate with Bill Maher and Sam Harris when he failed to comprehend that when a solid majority of the world’s 2 billion Muslims believe in killing infidels and apostates—along with stoning and beheading allegedly unfaithful wives—there is little comfort in knowing that several hundred million other Muslims believe otherwise.
It’s time to stop condescendingly proclaiming that we are a nation of immigrants. We already know that. Very few Americans are native to this land. Even the Pilgrims needed a boat to get here.
When “huddled masses” become sleeper cells, when “yearning to breathe free” becomes secondary to setting off bombs or financing an oncoming caliphate, there is little consolation in the reminder that immigrants can be patriots, too.
We’ve all seen the Statue of Liberty. We know about the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” But when “huddled masses” become sleeper cells, when “yearning to breathe free” becomes secondary to setting off bombs or financing an oncoming caliphate, there is little consolation in the reminder that immigrants can be patriots, too.
Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”
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