Just weeks after a bombshell report exposed billions of dollars of welfare fraud committed by Somali immigrants in deep-blue Minnesota, a new study is sounding the alarm on Somali overreliance on taxpayer-funded benefits.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), nearly 90% of Somali households with children in Minnesota receive welfare benefits. Over 80% of Somali immigrant households overall receive some form of welfare, including 54% on food stamps and nearly three-quarters (73%) on Medicaid, while 78% of Somali immigrant households who have been in the U.S. over 10 years receive welfare, compared to only 21% of native-born households.
Additionally, the CIS study found that while less than 20% of native-born adults live “in or near poverty,” over two-thirds (66.1%) of Somali immigrant adults live “in or near poverty,” as do over 80% of Somali immigrant children. Only 5% of native-born working-age adults hold no high school diploma, compared to over one third (39%) of Somali immigrant working-age adults, and while less than one percent (0.7%) of native-born working-age adults were categorized as speaking English “less than very well,” nearly 60% of Somali immigrant working-age adults fell into the category, as did nearly half (49%) of Somali immigrant working-age adults who have been in the U.S. at least 10 years.
“Among the strongest predictors of poverty are low education and lack of English-language ability,” wrote the study’s author, CIS Resident Scholar Jason Richwine. “Somali immigrants experience both of these problems at dramatically higher rates than native Minnesotans. Virtually all native Minnesotans speak English very well, for example, but 58.2 percent of working-age Somalis do not. Meanwhile, 39 percent of working-age Somalis have no high school diploma, compared to just 5 percent of natives,” he continued. “The U.S. has an extensive welfare system targeted at low-income families. Somalis in Minnesota are therefore likely to be major consumers of means-tested anti-poverty benefits…”
“Recently, some Somalis in Minnesota have been implicated in welfare fraud,” Richwine observed. “Over $1 billion has been reported stolen so far, but the scandal goes beyond money,” he added. “Minnesota’s social services have roots in the Scandinavian model, which assumes that civic-minded residents will treat aid as a safety net, not as money free for the taking. With fraud cases like these, it cannot be surprising when researchers find that culture clashes tend to degrade social trust,” Richwine pointed out. “That said, Somali welfare use would still be high even without fraud. Any population with poverty rates as high as theirs will legally qualify for extensive means-tested aid, either directly for themselves or indirectly through their U.S.-born dependents” (emphasis in original).
“The way to reduce immigrant consumption of welfare is not simply to crack down on fraud, but to reduce the number of new arrivals who have the low earnings power characteristic of Somalis,” Richwine suggested. “One of the main critiques of post-1965 immigration to the U.S. is that it has worsened the problems of poverty, school dropout, and welfare dependency. Allowing in immigrants who struggle with these problems adds to the social burden and makes helping impoverished Americans more difficult.”
The CIS report comes on the heels of an investigation by Christopher F. Rufo and Ryan Thorpe, published in City Journal, detailing widespread fraud and abuse of Minnesota’s “generous” welfare system by the state’s relatively large Somali population. Of the over $1 billion stolen through fraud schemes, several million dollars wound up being given to the Somalia-based terrorist group Al-Shabaab. “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,” Rufo and Thorpe wrote. “The predictable result is graft, with taxpayers left to foot the bill.”
According to the City Journal report, Somali immigrants in Minnesota set up fake businesses and organizations in order to collect welfare payments from housing, medical, and education programs. One Somali-run organization, the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, defrauded the Federal Child Nutrition Program of over $250 million, falsifying meal counts, doctoring attendance records, and fabricating invoices. Another Somali group would falsify autism diagnoses for Somali children in order to rob Minnesota’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program of over $14 million. In the end, one in 16 Somali children in Minnesota was diagnosed (mostly fraudulently) with autism, rising to more than triple the state average. “What we see are schemes stacked upon schemes, draining resources meant for those in need. It feels never-ending,” said then-Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Joe Thompson. “I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor, and the depth of the fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the fraud has not been relegated to Minnesota. Maine also hosts a relatively sizable Somali population and, according to an immigration nonprofit whistleblower, Somali immigrants have been defrauding the government there, too. Christopher Bernardini, former program coordinator of Gateway Community Services until April of this year, reported this week that Gateway Community Services, which describes itself as a “trusted resource for immigrant, refugee, and asylee communities across Greater Portland and Lewiston-Auburn” and largely serves Somali immigrants, charged taxpayers for field staff visits to low-income and disabled clients. Only those visits never occurred, Bernardini alleged.
“I just couldn’t fathom it — I thought we were helping people; I thought this was all on the up-and-up. I have a passion for helping people, and I thought that we were doing the right thing this whole time,” Bernardini said, adding that he was disheartened “when I saw how they were swindling people, when I had clients calling me to tell me their staff hadn’t shown up and I was told to bill those hours anyway. It just got worse and worse, until I started really putting up a stink.”
Gateway Community Services was founded by Abdullah Ali, a Somali immigrant who acts as the organization’s CEO and ran for president of the Somali state of Jubaland. According to the Maine Wire, Ali also raised funds for the Jubaland-Somali army, a Somali paramilitary organization.
In comments to The Washington Stand, CIS Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan asserted, “This exposure of the massive fraud perpetrated by Somali immigrants in Minnesota has been shocking to many Americans. There have been reports of similar problems in Maine, which also has taken in a disproportionate number of Somali and other African immigrants.” She continued, “These incidents reveal a significant threat to not only loss of taxpayer-funded resources meant to assist needy Americans, but also to the integrity of our immigration programs, to public governance, and potentially to our national security.”
“Much of the millions of dollars lost in this fraud can never be recovered, as the funds were spent on luxury lifestyles, campaign contributions, and even sent abroad,” Vaughan averred. “It sucked away funding that could have been used to help real people who are struggling to support their families, instead of phantom clients of the bogus NGOs created for the scheme.” She noted that state officials in Minnesota also “stymied” investigations into the fraud, accusing those reporting the fraud and demanding accountability of racism. “This borders on outright corruption, and could signal a real erosion of ethical standards that are the hallmark of a civil and democratic society.”
“It should go without saying that American taxpayers do not want their hard-earned tax dollars earmarked for local poverty programs to become cash cows for the exploits of Third World war lords,” Vaughan added. “This episode should cause Americans to think twice about allowing mass flows of largely un-vettable immigrants from unstable, hostile, and corrupt parts of the world to enter our country and establish ethnic enclaves where they are resistant to engaging with or assimilating into the host community,” she elucidated. “Our legal immigration programs need to be updated to reflect the realities of our modern world, and to focus on admitting only those immigrants who will be self-sufficient and contribute to our country.”
Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told TWS, “Americans have lived the consequences of Milton Friedman’s warning that a country ‘cannot have open borders and a welfare state.’ It is why Americans voted for President Trump last year — to bring an end to the Biden administration’s madness.” She charged, “American taxpayers deserve to have all that stolen money clawed back.”
“In addition to the billions in welfare fraud discovered in Minnesota, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have investigated and uncovered significant immigration benefit fraud in the Minneapolis area, including marriage fraud, sponsor fraud, and fraudulent documentation,” Ries continued, noting that she “encountered Somali asylum fraud in immigration court” during her time in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. “Benefit fraud — whether it is welfare or immigration — makes an alien deportable. Every alien who has committed fraud should be deported.”
Multiple reports over the years have warned that Somali immigrants were likely to defraud U.S. government programs, including the immigration system itself. In November of 2008, shortly before then-President George W. Bush left office, the U.S. State Department confirmed that “refugees” from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Liberia were obtaining refugee status and residence in the U.S. fraudulently. The “P-3” refugee program, which allows refugees to seek refugee status for their spouses, unmarried children, and parents, began requiring DNA tests to ensure blood relation between refugees in the U.S. and dependents being brought into the country via the program. The State Department was “only able to confirm all claimed biological relationships in fewer than 20% of cases…” Between 2003 and 2008, when Bush halted the program due to widespread fraud and abuse, over 95% of refugees in the program came from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Liberia. The P-3 program was restarted in 2012 under then-President Barack Obama.
Former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) legal advisor Charles Thaddeus Fillinger wrote a 30-page brief in 2018 characterizing the P-3 program as “the greatest refugee fraud crisis in modern times” and “possibly the biggest blunder in immigration history.” Although Fillinger admitted that the Obama-era restart improved screening in the program, he warned, “Left unresolved was the issue of thousands of fraudulent refugees who were admitted to the United States before the suspension. In contravention of clear principle, solid evidence, and direct experience, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) continued to use the wrong screening strategy to process the pre-suspension P-3 caseload.” He continued, “Yesterday’s fraudulent refugees became today’s green card holders,
international travelers using refugee travel documents, and U.S. citizens.”
“There were other follow-on consequences,” Fillinger noted. “First, fraud of this magnitude multiplies the chances of terror. Second, significant numbers of human trafficking victims, mostly women and children, were not identified because of deficient screening. Third, legions of fraudulently-admitted refugees took full advantage of public assistance benefits.”
A more recent report, penned by Somali immigrant Ayaan Hirsi Ali, explained the widespread fraud as a product of Somali culture. “I grew up in a Somali clan-based society [where] [l]oyalty to kin was absolute. Loyalty to the nation was theoretical at best,” Ali wrote. “Anyone who knows Somali culture has long known where this would lead.” She continued:
“Amoral familism is a cultural blueprint. It assumes that resources are scarce, the world is dangerous, and survival depends on extracting maximum benefit for one’s own family. Nation-building makes no sense from that perspective. If a road is built, the question is not ‘How will this help the community?’ but ‘Which family will control access to it?’ If foreign aid arrives, the question is not how to distribute it fairly, but which family will claim control. This mindset explains why Somalia collapsed. It explains the dysfunction in Afghanistan, Haiti, and parts of North and West Africa. It explains why Minnesota now faces problems it can’t make sense of, let alone solve.”
President Donald Trump “grasps the central problem. The left does not. The moderate right refuses to,” Ali wrote. “If Minnesota wants a future that resembles Minnesota, it must make a choice. Assimilation or fracture. Cultural cohesion or cultural evasion.”
AUTHOR
S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
RELATED ARTICLES:
Stephen Miller Says Somali Fraud Scandal Could Create Unprecedented Milestone In US History
Senate Fraud Hearing Displays How Trump Derangement Syndrome Blinds Dems to Deep Corruption in Federal Contracting
White House Posts Proof Ilhan Oma Married Her Brother
RELATED VIDEO: Somali Muslim Hasan Mohamed to ICE agents: ‘You’re gonna get popped next time I see you’
EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.
Partner with The Washington Stand to bring news from a biblical worldview to readers nationwide. From now until December 31, every gift will be doubled through our year-end Challenge Match.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
