Somali migrants are claiming that Minnesota’s economy would crash without them, even as the cost of Somali-run welfare fraud is growing on a weekly basis.
Minnesota has been wracked with a series of massive welfare fraud cases, leaving Democrat governor and failed 2024 vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz reeling. Much of the multibillions in fraud has been perpetrated by Somali migrants, who first began pouring into the state in the 1990s.
However, one state legislator is insisting that Minnesota would not be able to survive without Somalians.
Democrat Minnesota State Sen. Zaynab Mohamed — who was born in Somalia — in a recent interview said, “We are in every industry, and Minnesota would not be able to survive, nor thrive, without the Somali community.”
Elected to the state legislature in 2023, Mohamed claims that the criticism of imported Somalians is racist and that after Somalians are chased out of Minnesota, the racists will just move on to the next minority.
Mohamed, whose brother-in-law is controversial Minnesota State Sen. Omar Fateh (D), has been outspoken in opposition to American immigration laws and has repeatedly attacked Donald Trump as “authoritarian” and racist for seeking to repatriate millions of illegal aliens.
Last week, the 28-year-old Mohamed blasted Trump, saying, “This is an unserious president who’s been speaking [about] people of our community this way for the last decade,” she continued. “I think I was more shocked at the level of action that he’s taken since those statements that he made.”
In a public event held by Minnesota’s Democrat Party, Mohamed added that Trump’s immigration policy is “not about crime. It’s not about safety. This is about purging people like me from this country.”
Mohamed’s defense of “her people” comes even as citizen journalist Nick Shirley has become the number one story in America simply for taking a camera around to a large number of Somali-operated childcare facilities in Minneapolis and has exposed that none of them have any actual children in their care despite receiving millions in funding from the state’s Department of Human Services.
But Mohamed is far from the only Somali migrant in Minnesota championing Somalians that have been imported into the state.
During his failed bid for mayor of Minneapolis, Mohamed’s brother-in-law, Omar Fateh, claimed that white people are a threat to America.
Others, such as Salma Hussein, a Somali elementary school principal, are also speaking out. Hussein decried that she now has to carry proof that she is a legalized resident of Minneapolis and claimed, “We’re Somali Americans who are contributing in many aspects of society right now and we want to be able to bring attention to that,” CBS News reported.
A Somali migrant who has become a Minnesota county sheriff even claimed that he now works for Somalis, not Americans.
Another Somali migrant took to her TikTok account to scold Americans for focusing on the billions in Somali fraud and insisted that America should be thankful to Somalis for being so successful in Minnesota.
Suleiman Adan, deputy executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, even told CNN that “Somalis are as Minnesota as the state fair. That is, you know, we belong.”
At a recent community event, local Somali officials claimed that they belong in Minnesota and the state is now their land.
The left-wing Minneapolis Star Tribune also jumped into the act by claiming that Somalis contribute “$8 billion” to the state’s economy. Many pointed out that if they are also guilty of $18 billion in fraud, the $8 billion does not tip the scales very much.
More than 8-in-10 Somali refugees are on some sort of state or federal welfare program, Breitbart News reported. In addition, Fox News reported that “36% of Somali Minnesotans lived below the poverty line from 2019 to 2023 — more than triple the U.S. poverty rate of 11.1%,” and that the median income of Somali-headed households in Minnesota is $43,600 annually, which is far below the national median of $78,538.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D), who just barely avoid being voted out of office in November, told CNN, “The Somali community is almost universally American citizens. They have come here legally. They have contributed greatly to the fabric of who we are. They have benefitted Minneapolis in a really beautiful way.”
For his part, Gov. Tim Walz (D) has insisted that “Minnesota is a better place because Somalians chose to live here.”
Some Somali migrants are even bragging about soaking up as much welfare and government handouts as possible:
But there is a solution to all this crime and fraud. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a pro-Western refugee from Somalia’s tribal culture, warned that only aggressive assimilation will fix the problems created when the federal government decided to import Somalia’s clannish politics of “amoral familism.”
“I grew up in a Somali clan-based society … [where] Loyalty to kin was absolute. Loyalty to the nation was theoretical at best,” she wrote in a December 10 op-ed.
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