On Wednesday morning, the Department of Homeland Security posted on X, “GOOD MORNING MINNEAPOLIS!” Rep. Tom Emmer, a House Republican leader who represents Minneapolis suburbs, commented with encouragement: “Go out there and get ‘em.”

The Trump administration has surged thousands of immigration agents into the Twin Cities in what it has called the largest DHS operation ever. While the administration often frames its deportation operations as efforts to keep Americans safe, it has added another angle to its Minnesota campaign: eradicating fraud.

In 2022, during the Biden administration, federal prosecutors uncovered an enormous scheme to defraud a pandemic meals program in Minnesota’s Somali community, leading to charges against dozens of defendants and a growing number of convictions.

In the weeks leading up to the DHS deployment, conservative commentators had elevated that years-old scandal, suggesting that fraud was a reason to target East African migrants in the Minneapolis area. And within days of the story taking hold in conservative social media circles, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X that agents were “on the ground” in response.

More than 2,000 agents and officers from DHS have descended on the Twin Cities, and tensions are running high after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mom. DHS has said the incident was an act of self-defense, while some witnesses and Minneapolis’ mayor have challenged that explanation.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has attacked the Somali community as “garbage,” and right-wing influencers have filled X with videos purporting to investigate day cares connected to immigrants in an effort, they claim, to uncover ongoing fraud.

Here’s how a scandal prosecuted under both the Biden and Trump administrations went from a relatively local issue to one that has captured nationwide attention and been cited to bolster the White House’s immigration crackdown.

The crime

The scale of the fraud was massive. Prosecutors initially described a $250 million scheme but have since raised their estimate to $300 million — the largest fraud to come out of Covid-19 relief programs.

Federal prosecutors charged 78 defendants with connections to Feeding Our Future, the Minneapolis nonprofit organization at the center of the scandal. A jury convicted the accused ringleader in March, while other defendants have pleaded guilty and still more are awaiting trial. Most of them are of Somali descent, and the vast majority are American citizens, according to The New York Times, citing prosecutors.

The scam concerned government-subsidized meals for kids, prosecutors said: The nonprofit took grant money meant to feed thousands of children in minority communities, but its work was fictitious and it submitted fake records to keep the money flowing.

Prosecutors have widened their scope. Using the Feeding Our Future fraud as a jumping off point, they have since brought charges against other members of Minnesota’s Somali community alleging fraud against other government support programs.

How it started

The scandal began during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Government spending ramped up to try to alleviate the economic fallout, and agencies loosened some spending restrictions.

Prosecutors said that Aimee Bock, Feeding Our Future’s founder and executive director, worked with co-conspirators to create shell companies, fake attendance rosters and falsify documents to indicate thousands of children were being served meals.

Many of the children Bock was allegedly feeding — and many of her co-conspirators — were Somali Americans.

In November of last year, when conservative influencers started to take an interest in Minnesota fraud cases, they approached nonprofits and businesses with similar questions: asking whether they were providing the services they said they were.

Why it went on so long

There were early red flags, according to an autopsy of the failures conducted by the nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor in Minnesota.

As far back as 2018, the Minnesota Department of Education received complaints about Feeding Our Future’s management. And in February 2020, the Internal Revenue Service revoked the organization’s nonprofit status, citing a failure to file documentation.

Then, in April 2020, with schools closed and safety net programs ramping up, Feeding Our Future sent a draft lawsuit to the Minnesota Department of Education, threatening to sue if the state did not approve its applications for meal programs. The state complied, according to the legislative auditor. A similar pattern continued for more than a year.

In November 2020, Feeding Our Future sued the Minnesota Department of Education, alleging that the state was slow-walking its grant applications.

The lawsuit put state officials on the defensive, according to the Office of the Legislative Auditor, and deterred them from taking action against the nonprofit.

Auditors faulted the state for not having the investigative chops to catch fraud. For example, the state conducted some of its oversight visits virtually — a practice that it later acknowledged did not work.

How they were caught

The FBI learned about the fraud through a tip, according to legislative auditors: In February 2021, the FBI notified the state of allegations it received that Bock was accepting kickbacks and not providing the meals she said she was. Two months later, the state education department told the FBI that the tip had some merit, and the FBI launched its investigation in May.

Consequences arrived in 2022. That January, the FBI raided the office of Feeding Our Future, and the Minnesota Department of Education cut off its funding. Later that year, federal prosecutors announced indictments against 47 defendants. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland described it as “the largest pandemic relief fraud scheme charged to date,” at $250 million.

While the case made national and international headlines because of the scale, the indictments mostly played out in courtrooms and outside the spotlight. Three defendants pleaded guilty in October 2022, and prosecutors began preparing to take the other defendants to trial.

A jury convicted five defendants in a June 2024 trial, and prosecutors also charged additional people beyond those originally indicted.

The 2024 election

When Democrat Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate in August 2024, the fraud investigation was one of the first things Republicans used to attack him. That fall, House Republicans issued a subpoena to Walz for documents related to his oversight of Feeding our Future. But the fraud case fell from national discussion after Harris lost.

Federal prosecutors kept working on the case. Andrew Luger, the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney in Minnesota, said in December 2024 that he did not expect the election result to significantly alter how the government prosecuted fraud cases like the one involving Feeding Our Future.

“That’s bipartisan,” he told The Minnesota Star Tribune shortly before leaving office.

The investigation mushrooms

Bock, the Feeding Our Future founder whom prosecutors called the mastermind of the fraud, was found guilty in March 2025. She’s now awaiting sentencing and has been ordered to forfeit assets, including a 2013 Porsche and $3.5 million from Feeding Our Future’s bank account.

But federal prosecutors have not stopped their investigation into the meals program. In recent months, they have pursued what they said were similar fraud cases involving other safety-net programs.

In September 2025, the Department of Justice charged eight people, alleging they defrauded a Minnesota program meant to help seniors and people with disabilities find housing. The same month, it charged a man whom prosecutors accused of defrauding a Minnesota health care program designed to help people with autism.

“These massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer money,” said Joseph H. Thompson, a career federal prosecutor who was serving as the acting U.S. attorney in Minnesota at the time.

Conservative media takes a new interest

On Sep. 18, Trump took aim at Minnesota’s Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia, and Somali-Americans, telling reporters on Air Force One that Omar is “terrible” and saying “They come from a place with nothing, nothing, no, anything, and then they tell us how to run our country.” Trump’s criticism came after Republicans had tried unsuccessfully to censure her over a reposted video on her X account that Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said “smeared Charlie Kirk and implied he was to blame for his own murder.”

On Nov. 19, City Journal, a magazine run by the Manhattan Institute, a right-leaning think tank, published a story summarizing the Minnesota fraud allegations. It largely drew on local media coverage, indictments and press releases from prosecutors, but it also cited anonymous sources to make the claim that some of the money was routed to al-Shabab, a Somalia-based militant group that the U.S. and other countries have designated as a terrorist organization. Fox News picked up the story. One of the article’s named sources later criticized the piece, and federal prosecutors have not claimed that any of the government funds went to militant groups. Christopher Rufo, one of the City Journal writers, has posted on X that he stands by the piece. City Journal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reuters reported that the claim about al-Shabab apparently made its way to Trump via several Republican lawmakers. Within two days, Trump said he would terminate temporary deportation protections for Somalis living in Minnesota, asserting on social media that the state had become “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.”

Trump continued to attack Somali immigrants in December, as ICE agents launched a new deportation operation in the Twin Cities, which Reuters reported had put the Somali community there on edge.

Influencers focus on day cares

At the same time, Nick Shirley, a right-wing YouTube influencer from Utah, was on the ground in Minneapolis filming himself attempting to visit Somali child care centers. He had previously published a video about Muslims in Minnesota that insinuated an Islamic takeover was afoot, drawing little attention. But on Dec. 26, he released a 42-minute video claiming he uncovered over $100 million in fraud. It quickly went viral and now has more than 139 million views on X.

Other social media influencers and journalists have visited the same facilities identified in Shirley’s video in the two weeks since he posted it — some echoing Shirley’s claims they are fraudulent, and others demonstrating things he got wrong. The Minnesota Star Tribune reported on Jan. 1 that during its visits to the same day cares where Shirley had shown or insinuated no children were present, the newspaper observed children in four and wasn’t allowed inside six others.

Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families said on Jan. 2 that its investigators checked nine of the child care facilities portrayed as fraudulent in viral social media clips and found they were operating normally, and one is now closed.

Unproven fraud claims expand beyond Minnesota

Over New Year’s week, Shirley’s video was the top story across conservative media. Right-wing political activists and influencers quickly picked up on his viral success and emulated his tactics with similar videos in which they visited day cares in other states including Ohio, Oregon and Washington. Prominent pro-Trump accounts on X amplified the videos and other posts from people who raised questions about day care business filings.

The vast majority of child care facilities spotlighted appeared to be connected to Somali immigrants. Some state lawmakers and congressional candidates called for state investigations into whether “Minnesota-style fraud” was occurring in their towns.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, tried to tamp down speculation about rampant, unchecked fraud in the state, fact-checking viral but misleading claims on X about some specific day cares. In a subsequent press conference on Jan. 5, he further elaborated on how the state conducts oversight of its 5,200 child care facilities. DeWine said the public shouldn’t be surprised that day cares are telling people who show up while filming that they aren’t allowed to come inside; it’s for the protection of children.

“Hell no — no one should let them in,” he said.

But conservative content creators and activists have continued posting videos of themselves visiting day cares run by members of the Somali community in Ohio and other states. They’ve also drawn attention to business filings, raising questions about why some companies share mailing addresses or ownership.

Musse Olol, president of the Somali American Council of Oregon, told NBC News that businesses in the community have faced what appeared to be coordinated harassment, ranging from racial and religious insults online to people taking photos outside of their offices.

“This feels like an unprecedented and targeted campaign,” Olol said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a nonprofit advocacy group, said Monday that Somali American-run day care centers and businesses need more law enforcement protection because they’ve received an onslaught of threats stemming from the firestorm on social media.

Trump administration freezes funds

The social media focus on day cares has prompted a multiagency response from the Trump administration.

The Department of Health and Human Services said last week it was withholding nearly $10 billion in federal funds that support child care, primarily through the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, from five states run by Democrats: California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York. On Friday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the move.

Vice President JD Vance told reporters Thursday that the administration planned to create a new assistant attorney general position — run directly out of the White House — to investigate fraud allegations. He claimed there was misconduct in Ohio and California, though he did not provide examples.

The Trump administration has demanded California provide verified attendance information to get its child care funds back, according to a series of letters from the federal Administration for Children and Families cited in the New York Post that speculate that welfare funds have gone to ineligible noncitizens.

HHS also proposed a series of new rules this week to change how day care is subsidized by the government, including getting rid of a requirement to pay based on enrollment figures. Jim O’Neill, the department’s deputy secretary, said on social media that the Biden administration made it easier for fraud to occur in day care support programs through a regulation that based payment on enrollment rather than attendance. However, the Biden-era regulation still permitted states to require attendance records from child care providers and cut them off if they showed “excessive unexplained absences.”

Meanwhile, DHS posted several tweets in recent weeks announcing that its agents are going “DOOR TO DOOR” in Minnesota to investigate unnamed businesses for fraud, and the DOJ said it is sending additional federal prosecutors to help.

Congressional Republicans have also seized on the issue.

On Wednesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held the first in a planned series of hearings on social services fraud in Minnesota. Three Minnesota GOP lawmakers appeared as witnesses, answering questions from Republicans on the committee that steered blame toward Walz. Congressional Democrats accused Republicans of inappropriately focusing on the Somali community.

The committee’s GOP leadership said it may subpoena Walz — who ended his bid for a third term as governor this week — and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison for a future hearing.

That same day — the last of Renee Nicole Good’s life — acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said the agency was surging agents into Minnesota as part of the “largest immigration operation ever.”