The FBI, alongside federal and local law enforcement, executed at least 22 federal search warrants in Minnesota on Tuesday, tied to a fraud investigation in the state.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the news in a post on X, saying the department “executed criminal search warrants in Minneapolis relating to the rampant fraud of American taxpayers’ dollars.”
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The post went on to say Homeland Security will work to inform Americans on how their taxpayer dollars were “abused.”
NBC News reports that at least one facility searched was the Somali Senior Center and Adult Day Services facility.
“The task force and the DOJ will be relentless in exposing these fraudsters wherever they may be hiding,” Vice President J.D. Vance said in a post on X Tuesday morning.
The Minnesota fraud investigation
The federal raids come after an investigation into fraud in the state took on new life late last year, when a conservative YouTube creator posted a video in which he claimed that Somali-run day cares were receiving government money but caring for no children.
An investigation into the alleged fraud had begun in 2021, but the Trump administration took an interest after the viral video. President Donald Trump cited the alleged fraud when he ordered federal immigration agents into the state.
The president and administration have continued to blame Minnesota lawmakers for failing to act, or for not acting aggressively enough.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz dropped his bid for a third term as a result of the investigation, saying it had become a distraction.
In a post on X Tuesday, Walz said the raids were thanks to local officials who discovered the fraud.
“Today’s raids by state and federal law enforcement happened because our state agencies caught irregular behavior and reported it,” Walz wrote. “That’s how the system is supposed to work, and our agencies will keep at it as long as there are fraudsters around to put behind bars.”
He went on to say the feds should now focus their efforts on investigating the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed by immigration enforcement in Minnesota earlier this year.
Concerns over funding terrorist organizations
As part of the investigations, the Treasury Department, Homeland Security and the House Oversight Committee are looking into the hawala system, an informal network that can make cross-border and domestic transfers outside of traditional banking systems.
“It’s really no different than a typical money service business or a money transfer business like Western Union,” Jonathan Ercanbrack, reader in transnational financial law at the University of London’s College of Law, previously told Straight Arrow. “A party approaches a hawala agent, and that hawala agent, through their connections, is able to send money informally. And the recipient of that money generally produces some form of ID, and sometimes, occasionally a so-called hawala code, that is used for identification purposes, and they pay out the cash in the local currency.”
As Straight Arrow previously reported, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused Somalis here in the U.S. of helping finance the terrorist organization al-Shabab by using the hawala system.
So far, none of the investigations have announced any findings into any potential funding to al-Shabab from Somali migrants in Minnesota.
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