Somali immigrants in Minnesota have been fraudulently siphoning off billions in taxpayer welfare dollars and sending them to Somalia, a City Journal investigation found, with millions directly funding terrorism.

Our investigation shows what happens when a tribal mindset meets a bleeding-heart bureaucracy, when imported clan loyalties collide with a political class too timid to offend, and when accusations of racism are cynically deployed to shield criminal behavior.
—City Journal

Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program, launched in 2020, was supposed to cost $2.6 million a year. In the first six months of this year, it has paid out $61 million. Attorney Joe Thompson says the “vast majority” is fraudulent.

“What we see are schemes stacked upon schemes, draining resources meant for those in need. It feels never ending,” Thompson said. “I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor, and the depth of the fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away.”

One egregious example is Somali families receiving money by claiming their children have autism. Such claims to Medicaid in Minnesota skyrocketed from $3 million in 2018 to $399 million in 2023. Somalis established dozens of autism treatment centers, and Somali 4-year-olds were diagnosed with autism at triple the state average.

Where do all those dollars go? Much of it back to Somalia, where 4 in 10 households receive money from abroad. “In 2023 alone, the Somali diaspora sent back $1.7 billion—more than the Somali government’s budget for that year,” City Journal reports.

And no small amount of it is funding al-Shabaab, the al Qaeda-linked Islamic terrorist group. The City Journal report says millions have been funneled “through a network of ‘hawalas,’ informal clan-based money-traders, that have wound up in the coffers of al-Shabaab.” The article is titled “The Largest Funder of al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer.”

This is largely a self-inflicted curse, enabled by political correctness and cowardice; a bloated, unruly welfare system; and corrupt bureaucrats. But it is only one facet of a larger curse, divinely imposed because of America’s sins, warned of in Deuteronomy 28:43: “The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low.”