All Of A Sudden, Everyone's Jumping On The Somali Fraud Bandwagon

🚨 Here is the full 42 minutes of my crew and I exposing Minnesota fraud, this might be my most important work yet. We uncovered over $110,000,000 in ONE day. Like it and share it around like wildfire! Its time to hold these corrupt politicians and fraudsters accountable

We ALL… pic.twitter.com/E3Penx2o7a

— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) December 26, 2025

Just yesterday, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer called for deportations and denaturalizations of Somali fraudsters:

I have three words regarding Somalis who have committed fraud against American taxpayers: Send them home. If they’re here illegally, deport them immediately; if they’re naturalized citizens, revoke their citizenship and deport them quickly thereafter. If we need to change the law to do that, I will. Our nation will not tolerate those who take advantage of our charity and refuse to assimilate into our culture.

But just like cameras are everywhere, the internet is forever. Via the Daily Caller, Minnesotans Begged GOP Rep To Stop The Somalis Over A Decade Ago — He Told Them It Was Impossible:

Minnesotans begged House Majority Whip Tom Emmer more than a decade ago to halt the flood of Somali refugees to the area, but the lawmaker scolded them for their concerns.

Minnesota’s Somali population is back in the spotlight after YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a video canvassing multiple Somali-run childcare centers accused of fraud. However, A resurfaced audio clip from “This American Life” shows that voters were concerned about mass Somali migration long before the recent controversy.

In an episode that aired in October 2016, journalist Zoe Chace narrated portions of the story, including a reflection on a July 2015 town hall event at Aces Bar in downtown St. Cloud. Describing the room as packed, Chace said one constituent told Emmer that he believed most people in the bar “are here to find out how you feel about assimilation of immigrants,” before playing a clip from the event.

“We did not ask for those Somalis. Nobody asked us if we, in St. Cloud, want those Somalis. And we understand that social groups, like the Lutheran social service and the Catholic charities, they’re dumping them in areas like St. Cloud,” the man could be heard stating.

. . . In the recorded town hall, Emmer pushes back on the man, with Chace describing the lawmaker as firing “a warning shot at the implicit racism” directed at Somalis. As Emmer argues that Somalis are one of “the fastest-assimilating populations,” prompting audible groans of disapproval.

Although attention to the Somali fraud problem in Minnesota has been building for several weeks, Nick Shirley's 42-minute video, embedded above, put things in clear focus. The Somali immigration problem is starting to look like just another special case of the bigger issues raised most effectively by City Journal during the 2024 presidential campaign:

Among [Charleroi, Pa's] old guard, frustrations are starting to boil over. Instead of being used to revitalize these communities, these residents argue, resources get redirected to the new arrivals, who undercut wages, drive rents up, and, so far, have failed to assimilate. Worst of all, these residents say, they had no choice—there was never a vote on the question of migration; it simply materialized.

This is the same grievance that was raised by the man in the 2015 St Cloud, MN town meeting: nobody got to vote on the migrants. And the St Cloud residents pointed out another problem that surfaced in last year's campaign controversies: the immigrants are settled en masse in selected minicipalities by faith-based NGOs. I askd Chrome AI mode, "Have faith-based NGOs been involved in settling Somalis in Minnesota?" It answered,

Yes, faith-based NGOs like Lutheran Social Services (LSS) of Minnesota and Catholic Charities were significantly involved in helping settle Somali refugees in Minnesota, alongside government agencies and community groups, providing essential services like housing, employment help, and English classes, especially as Somalis began arriving in large numbers in the 1990s.

But even fraud perpetrated by particular immigrant groups is just part of the overall picture. Estimates of the monetary amount are steadily increasing:

It’s a very real possibility that the United States is looking at over $2.5 trillion/year in fraud from state and federal entitlements.

That’s more than next year’s estimated federal budget deficit.

This is a national security issue. https://t.co/6v0erL5IpZ

— TimOnPoint (@TimOnPoint) December 30, 2025

It's a bit odd that a single video by an unknown investigator managed to wake everyone up over the sleepiest of holiday periods. I don't think respectable media had expected to get back to work until Martin Luther King's Birthday, if not President's Day. And an unlikely focus of the story is Minnesota Gov Tim Walz:

One of the things I find most odd about Walz is that he constantly seeks the spotlight, even though that spotlight hasn't been very friendly to him. Walz is one of those politicians who definitely doesn't grow on the public when they get to know him more. The public outside of his home state, that is. I don't know what's in the water in Minnesota that makes him so popular there.

It's indicative of how thin the Democratic bench is that they thought that Walz was a viable national candidate in 2024. I'm still convinced that the reason Kamala Harris chose him as a running mate was that he was the only option whom she could feel smarter than. She said that she just hit it off with him better than his rivals, probably because he seems dumb as a box of rocks.

In fact, legacy media hadn't been covering the Somali fraud story seriously until the Nick Shirley post. As of December 13,

The massive billion-dollar fraud allegedly committed by Somalis in Minnesota is still being submerged by the broadcast networks in favor of performative outrage at President Donald Trump’s statements at public events disparaging the Somalis and Somalia.

Early in the week, Curtis Houck at NewsBusters found ABC and NBC only touched on the Minnesota fraud in 21% of their Somali coverage. The vast majority of verbiage was negative evaluations of Trump. Add in CBS, and the fraud fraction went up to 31%, in part because "Face The Nation" host Margaret Brennan interviewed Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar about it.

The brilliance of Shirley's video is its visual quality: stopping by day care centers with no children, the misspelled "Learing Center" sign, or the Somalis calling the cops on Shirley for trespassing. It's made to be watched on video; print media will never be quick enough to answer it.

For now, the best measure of the story's impact will be how soon Gov Walz either drops out of next year's governor race or resigns entirely -- or if he does anything at all.