SWORN condemns the use and abuse of taxpayer funds and the corruption from the top to bottom involved that leads to this situation.

When the American people are taxed at such a high level and the funds spent are so astronomical that oversight of what happens to those funds is lax, then clearly too much is being taken from the tax paying citizen and it’s a situation ripe for graft and corruption. There are few things that irk the American taxpayer more than when we see money taken from us via taxation only to have those funds abused and stolen.

When we learn, as we recently did thanks to the intrepid work of a young man named Nick Shirley, that those funds were being stolen and much of it funneled back into Somalia directly and quite a bit of those funds went to terrorist groups in the Middle East, we are beyond outraged. On January 12 nearly $700 million was confiscated by TSA at the John Glenn International Airport that was on it’s way to Somalia. Sadly this scandal is not unique in Minnesota. This is but only the most recent example of such programs being abused has become known in the media as the “Somali Day Care Center fraud”, but it’s much larger and deeper than that. It spider webs into other programs where exactly the same thing happened in recent years but has been largely forgotten.

So we will only go back five years in discussing such things to contain this huge issue. The problem begins when legislation is written in such a way as to assure there is very little oversight of how such money is spent, always in the name of some benevolent feel good cause. In 2022 the Federal Government did get tipped off by whistleblowers of another such case of abuse in the “Feeding our Future” scandal where again tax payer funds were being stolen. This was a program designed to help pay for food during the Covid 19 fiasco. Fifty individual were prosecuted in this case but up to seventy-eight, were suspected of involvement.

Again the Somali community was up to their neck in this recent but forgotten scandal . Abdi Salah (a top adviser to Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey) was involved and was convicted in this case and politicians like Frey, and Ilhan Omar who received donations of the purloined funds were permitted to return those monies. And just like now those investigating the scandal are being hounded in the media as racist and right wing. But before the dust settled legislation was written providing funds for the next scam on the American people.

The previous year a smaller scandal took place. Minnesota’s Integrated Community Supports (ICS) program launched in 2021, intended to aid adults with disabilities. It initially cost the state $4.6 million a year when it launched in 2021, but "explosively grew" to nearly $180 million in 2025 Fraudulent providers for ICS were suspected of failing to provide services that they billed to Minnesota. Lack of care has been connected to the death of at least one participant in ICS. Rick Clemmer, an ICS enrollee, died in 2025 from a medical emergency with nobody around to call for emergency services. His ICS provider, Abdul Ibrahim of Ultimate Home Health Services LLC, claimed he only checked on Clemmer once a day, despite Ultimate Home Health Services billing Minnesota for 12 hours of one on one care daily. In 2025, at least 17 providers were suspended by DHS due to credible allegations of fraud. In December 2025, the FBI raided Ultimate Home Health Services LLC, alleging that it billed for services that were never provided.

Minnesota sadly is not unique. The legislation authorizing these funds aimed primarily at the Somali community has gone to other states. Ohio also has a large Somali population and they tapped into these funds set aside for Day Care Centers, etc… 61 providers in Ohio, have been forced to reimburse the state and twelve facilities have been closed down as of January 2026. And like in Minnesota counter accusations of Islamophobia and racism are being used to deflect attention from the obvious fraud.

It is a curious thing that coinciding with the revelation of this fraud that Anti ICE protests exploded on the scene, especially in Minneapolis . Since Minneapolis is the epicenter of this fraud investigation it’s a curious coincidence that Leftist groups have poured so much attention and resources into fighting ICE in Minneapolis. So many reckless people acting out leading to many arrests and two deaths. Enough chaos to completely take the media’s collective eyes off the Somali scandal. We have no doubt this is all connected.

Years ago James Madison was pressed to provide money in the wake of a crisis. His response was that he could not lay his finger on the provision in the US Constitution that allowed money to be spent on objects of benevolence for the American people. We am pretty darned sure he would say that of money spent for benevolence for the Somali community, a community that pretty much refuses to assimilate and continues to plot and steal like their cousins at home known for their piracy. Maybe it’s not that they had hard hearts in those early days of our Republic. Perhaps it’s just that our first generation of leaders understood such spending would lead to fraud on a massive scale and wanted to avoid it.