At Fardowsa Ali’s restaurant in Minneapolis, she said the usual steady flow of diners seeking Somali sambusas or desserts has been replaced with threatening phone calls.
“It’s really sad,” said Ali, who opened Albi Kitchen last summer. “I called police because one guy called here and said he was going to come here and break everything.”
The threats and declining business began after conservative content creator Nick Shirley posted a video accusing day care centers in Minneapolis’ Somali community of fraud – including one in the same building as her cafe, Ali said.
Since the video was posted, Ali and other business owners and families in the state’s deeply rooted Somali community have said they were threatened, harassed and bullied on social media. A day care facility was vandalized and parents are afraid to send their children to school. Somali restaurants and coffee shops that once bustled with patrons were nearly empty last week and people are scared to show up to their jobs.
The backlash from Shirley’s video has exacerbated the anxiety residents of Somali descent in Minnesota were already feeling after President Donald Trump called the community “garbage” and sent immigration enforcement agents to the state in December, making the Twin Cities the latest target of his deportation push, which was previously seen in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte and New Orleans.
“This climate of fear is disrupting livelihoods, separating families, and undermining the sense of safety and belonging for an entire community,” Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Minnesota chapter, said of how the nation’s largest Somali diaspora has felt in recent weeks.
Day care centers disrupted by scandal
Some day care providers say Shirley’s video has disrupted daily life for them as they care for children— some of whom come from working class families who heavily rely on child care. They are now fielding an influx of phone calls, threats and media attention while trying to calm fearful parents and children.
Phone calls to day care owner and consultant Kassim Busuri’s facility near Minneapolis have skyrocketed with people asking questions about enrollment, hours of operation and availability, he said.
The callers, he said, don’t seem like genuinely interested parents and are a distraction from the work his team needs to be doing. CNN is not naming Busuri’s day care facility because he is afraid his center could be targeted.
“It’s just random calls, extra things that we don’t need to focus on,” Busuri said. “We need to focus on our children that we care for.”
The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families said Friday its investigators visited the child care centers at the center of fraud allegations and found they were operating as expected with the exception of one, which “was not yet open for families.”
The fraud allegations have brought unwelcome attention to a community that prides itself on small business ownership, close-knit families and rich culture, and that has been growing in Minnesota for about 30 years.
Minnesota became an epicenter for Somalis in the early 1990s when the Somali government collapsed and the East African country erupted in violence. Millions of people were displaced or fled to dozens of countries around the world.
Many immigrants found Minnesota appealing because of job opportunities at meatpacking plants in rural areas where demand for workers far outstripped the supply, Ahmed Ismail Yusuf, a Minnesota author, writer and playwright previously told CNN.
Now, the Minneapolis-St. Paul area is home to about 84,000 people of Somali descent, making it the largest population in the United States, and almost 58% of the Somalis in Minnesota were born in the country, according to the US Census Bureau.
Activists in the Somali community have been adamant about protecting the image of Somali people—who they emphasize are not any more involved in criminal behavior or fraud than any other group. The bad actors, they say, are in the minority.
While Shirley’s claims could not be immediately verified, authorities have been investigating schemes in Minnesota for years. Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has spent the past year dealing with backlash from fraud schemes involving some Somali residents. In one instance, federal charges were brought against dozens of people — the vast majority of them Somali — linked to Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit prosecutors say falsely claimed to be providing meals to needy children during the Covid-19 pandemic. Thirty-seven defendants have pleaded guilty, the Associated Press reported, but it’s unclear how many of them are Somali.
Khalid Omar, a community organizer with the non profit ISAIAH, which advocates for racial and economic justice in Minnesota, believes Shirley’s video has only incited hate and “scapegoated” the Somali community because day cares that weren’t named are now being targeted. He also noted he trusts state officials to fully investigate fraud allegations.
“If someone commits fraud, they should be held accountable, period,” Omar said. “But to frame a whole community, it’s wrong, and it’s un-American, because we don’t believe in collective punishment.”
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said condemning and attacking an entire community for the alleged criminal behaviors of a small group is “pure racism.”
“It’s racism that would never be tolerated against any other community,” Mitchell said.
Hussein said most Somali residents in the Twin Cities are “hardworking families, small business owners, healthcare workers, students, and taxpayers who contribute every day to Minnesota’s economy and civic life.”
“When an entire community is stigmatized, the impact is immediate,” Hussein said. “Families live in fear, businesses suffer, and trust in public institutions erodes.”
