Somalia, Fraud, and Minnesota: The Cracks Within the American System

Fraud within America is in part due to its actions abroad I spent a few years working in Somalia during the 1980s. A day I’ll never forget is when my residence was invaded by the “guulwadde”, Siyaad Barre’s “Seekers of Victory” who were there at 3AM in ful force of 16 or 17 AK-47 toting intimidators, under direct order from President Mohammed Siad Barre. I was awoken suddenly in the middle of the night to the sound of banging on my locked door by my guard (also named Mohammed) yelling that he would be killed if the guul wadde weren’t let in. Later, I pieced it together that this incident spread from corruption I discovered being perpetrated by a cousin related to the President’s wife in the then $43 million Central Rangelands Development Project that had become a cash cow for numerous high level Somalis back in that day. Graham Hancock wrote about it in “lords of Poverty”. This corruption ran rampant throughout Somalia during the time period. Siad Barre’s government had flip flopped from Soviet-allied to American-allied during the latter stages of the Cold War. Despite maintaining its Marxist-Leninist form of governance, the U.S. was up for partnering with Somalia after the new Ethiopian Mengistu, invited the Soviets in in lieu of the less philosophically aligned United States of America. The net result of the abrupt appearance of the USA in Somalia, and its decision to set up a rapid deployment base in Berbera in the far north near the Bab al Mandab strait across from Yemen (a move no doubt the U.S. regrets it never followed through on at this point…) was that fraud and absconded monies from large development projects reportedly ran deep to the highest levels of Somali society, with further reports of briefcases filled with cash moving in all directions.

There can be no doub t that this reality was impressed in the mindset of some - not all! - Somalis immigrating to the United States in subsequent years post BlackHawk Down when things really feel apart. Fraudulent, American-sponsored practices in their country of origin set the precedent that success could be easily achieved through in polite language can be called “economic circumvention”, or in less polite speak is simply gaming the system. This affect in all appearances manifested itself most strongly in a subset of the Somali community as reported in Minnesota. Again, this is a small subset, with little evidence that it represents the Somali community as a whole. Somalis and Minnesota in 2026 Earlier this year, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted various operations in Minneapolis — specifically targeted against the Somali-American community, who President Donald Trump publicly labeled as “garbage.” At their peak in January, there were approximately 1,500 ICE agents scattered across the city, making it the largest domestic immigration operation in history. Caught up in the conundrum was 37 year-old Caucasian woman Renee Nicole Good, who was shot by an agent, giving national publicity to the situation. These operations all happened amidst accusations that Somali-Americans have committed billions of dollars in welfare fraud — already 59 of the 96 defendants charged, of which 87% are Somali, have been convicted. The misappropriated funds mostly consist of federal child nutrition grants affiliated with Somali-owned daycare and autism therapy programs. It’s entirely possible that Somali immigrants learned from the lack of American institutional oversight in their own country that they could simply “game” their way to self-enrichment in the United States. Now, again, I am NOT saying that all Somalis in Minnesota engage in fraudulent behavior — far from it, I know a number personally and all of them are good, honorable people I would 100% trust with my own money. However, the numbers — which suggest that the amount of fraud committed could exceed the GDP of Somalia altogether — have thus far been dire.

My Conclusions There’s two conclusions that I think need to be made here. First of all, it is absolutely true that there are plenty of people who game the system in America, and some of those who have done so recently are Somali immigrants or their descendants. The convictions thus far prove as much, and the national attention placed upon Minnesota is in that regard justified. There have been clear leaks in our government’s institutions that need to be patched, and outing wrongdoers is an effective first step. However, the second, and more important conclusion, is that we cannot use these accusations as an indictment on the Somali-American community as a whole. Fraud cases are littered throughout the United States across all demographics and political orientations: Republican-dominated, 67% white Alabama leads the way with 28,000 active filings, followed closely by Democratic-run, 67% nonwhite California. There are plenty of people who exploit loopholes in the system illegally, but you don’t see record- high counts of ICE agents being deployed to their communities as a tactic of intimidation. I’ll reiterate that while some Somali-Americans have engaged in fraud according to the evidence, the vast majority remain good people who do not deserve the stigmas nor disdain levied against them. So, how do we fix this? The first step is to actually acknowledge the problem. Both state and federal government branches are aware of the existence of fraud in a vacuum, but instead of working together to close the loopholes, they blame each other for the issue (Trump blaming fraud cases on Somali-Americans in Minnesota stands out as a prime example). I don’t — for all my time in Somalia — pretend to have the solution to fraudulent practices within the United States, but we need to start addressing the actual problem rather than creating unrelated new ones. As well, we cannot single out one ethnic community as the source of America’s budgetary problems and expect that by midterm election time 2026 voters will not understand are issues go far beyond fraud with the small subset of the Somali American community that committed it.