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Stuck in Brazil with premature baby, Minnesota family fights bureaucracy to return home

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Stuck in Brazil with premature baby, Minnesota family fights bureaucracy to return home


This week, Greyson Leo Phillips turned nine weeks old. He’s finally out of neonatal intensive care after 51 days, and he has more than doubled his birth weight of 2 pounds, 2.6 ounces.

But he’s not home, unless an Airbnb in the Brazilian coastal city of Florianópolis counts at home. Instead, Greyson is stuck in a Brazilian bureaucratic nightmare, unable to leave Brazil and go to his real home in Minnesota.

Greyson and his parents, Chris and Cheri Phillips of Cambridge, have been battling a maddening bureaucratic Catch-22 after his premature birth during a winter trip to Brazil. Because of a technicality, Brazilian authorities haven’t issued his birth certificate; the office said it cannot issue a birth certificate because Chris and Cheri’s passports, like all American passports, don’t have their parents’ names.

Without a birth certificate, Greyson can’t get a U.S. passport.

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Without a U.S. passport, Greyson can’t go home to Minnesota.

“We’ve been working on this since day one, and we have nothing yet,” Chris said.

Their odyssey began in mid-February. Chris, who used to live in Brazil, has a daughter from a previous relationship who lives with her mother in Florianópolis, about 700 miles southwest of Rio de Janeiro. He and Cheri traveled there to celebrate his daughter’s eighth birthday. Cheri’s doctors encouraged her to make the trip; she’d had zero complications and was yet to enter her third trimester. This was the time to do it, they told her.

A couple days before their scheduled return in March, Cheri felt back pain, then contractions. Early the next morning, Cheri was bleeding. They went to a hospital at 4 a.m. For days, doctors tried to stop labor.

“That was our hope — just calm down her body and get on planes and go home,” said Chris, who works in marketing and communications at Children’s Minnesota. “It soon became apparent that was not going to happen. This baby was go to be born in Brazil.”

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Greyson was born March 12 with a hole in his heart, struggling with apnea. As Chris and Cheri huddled over their son in an incubator, their Realtor and mortgage broker completed the sale of their St. Louis Park condo and purchase of their Cambridge house. Friends and family moved their stuff into their new home.

The main holdup seems mundane. Brazilian hospitals give parents a certificate of live birth, then parents must visit a local registry office for an official birth certificate. But officials refused to issue the birth certificate, Chris said, since Chris and Cheri’s passports don’t have their parents’ names. (American passports don’t include parents’ names, but Brazilian passports do.)

Chris’ uncle shipped the couple’s birth certificates and marriage license, which have their parents’ names. Those were deemed unacceptable because they don’t have an apostille stamp, which authenticates a public official’s signature for use in a foreign country. They hired a lawyer to secure Greyson’s documentation. A month later, their case hasn’t gone anywhere.

After the Brazilian birth certificate, the couple will need a consular report of birth abroad and a U.S. passport from an embassy or consulate in Brazil. But according to U.S. State Department policy, applicants must physically go to the appointment.

This presents multiple problems: The nearest consulate is 300 miles away in a region that’s experiencing severe flooding. Greyson can’t fly without documentation. And Greyson is too small for his car seat, so they can’t drive.

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The family received a bit of good news this week: After pressure from U.S. Sen. Tina Smith’s office, the embassy agreed to send a representative to Florianópolis to process Greyson’s American documentation.

But only after they secure a Brazilian birth certificate.

“Mentally, we are not doing well,” Chris said Wednesday as he drove to a federal office in Florianópolis to extend their tourist visas. In their “first piece of bureaucratic good news yet,” Chris said, Brazilian authorities extended their visas until Aug. 21.

“It’s mentally exhausting,” said Cheri, who works as a philanthropy services manager at Saint Therese Senior Living. “Now that he’s quote-unquote ‘home’ in an Airbnb, it’s honestly even harder on me. The only reason we’re here now is because of all the bureaucracy. I’m either on the verge of crying or I’m mad or I’m just sitting on couch with Greyson, cuddling or nursing him.”

There’s been only one blessing from this experience, Chris said: Spending more time with his 8-year-old daughter, Melory, who he typically only sees three times a year.

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“And she’s had the opportunity to bond with Greyson,” Chris said. “That’s the only silver lining.”



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Minnesota investigators say child care centers captured in viral video were operating as expected

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Minnesota investigators say child care centers captured in viral video were operating as expected


A video by a right-wing content creator accusing several Somali-owned child care centers in Minnesota of fraud went viral and led to compliance checks by Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families. The agency says they were operating normally, except for one that was not yet open when investigators arrived.



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Game Recap: Kings 5, Wild 4 (S/O) | Minnesota Wild

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Game Recap: Kings 5, Wild 4 (S/O) | Minnesota Wild


Matt Boldy scored late in the third to tie it and ultimately send the game to overtime, helping the Wild (25-10-8) extend their point streak to six games (3-0-3). Brock Faber had a goal and an assist, Jake Middleton and Joel Eriksson Ek also scored, and Jesper Wallstedt made 34 saves.

It was the second game of a back-to-back for Minnesota, which is coming off a 5-2 win at the Anaheim Ducks on Friday. The Wild and Kings will play again in Los Angeles on Monday.

“It was far from perfect of a game from us,” Faber said. “I thought we could have played better. With that quick turnaround, we’ll take the point. Now we need two in the next.”

Kempe put the Kings up 1-0 at 6:08 of the first period, scoring on a wrist shot from close range off Anze Kopitar’s cross-slot pass from below the goal line.

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Middleton tied it up 1-1 at 8:28, getting his first goal of the season in 36 games on a snap shot from the left circle set up by Mats Zuccarello.

“I think he thought I was Kirill (Kaprizov) in the slot there, so it was nice to get one,” Middleton joked. “I normally have a few goals before I take 35 games off from scoring, so this one was getting a little stressful but we got it out of the way.”

Perry gave Los Angeles a 2-1 lead at 16:57 of the second period when Byfield’s shot struck him in the wrist and redirected in for the power-play goal.

Eriksson Ek tied it 2-2 at 18:23 on the power play, taking Quinn Hughes’ stretch pass at the offensive blue line for a short breakaway, fending off defenseman Joel Edmundson and scoring on a wrist shot from the left circle.

Byfield put Los Angeles back in front 3-2 at 4:54 of the third period. He shot the puck caroming off the boards back into the crease, where Wallstedt lost it in his skates and it was eventually knocked in by a Wild stick during the ensuing scramble in front.

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“Shouldn’t be, that was terrible,” Byfield joked when asked if he knew it was his goal. “No, it’s good. I think it’s two now that were liked that, so I’ll take them how they come.”



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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on the defensive as fraud allegations mount after viral video uncovered Somali aid scheme

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on the defensive as fraud allegations mount after viral video uncovered Somali aid scheme


Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pushed back against the ever-growing fraud allegations levied against him in the disastrous aftermath of a viral video where an independent journalist cracked open a crucial part of the alleged Somali aid scheme.

A spokesperson for Walz, a Democrat who frequently provokes President Trump’s ire, addressed a bombshell video posted by conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley.

“The governor has worked for years to crack down on fraud and ask the state legislature for more authority to take aggressive action. He has strengthened oversight — including launching investigations into these specific facilities, one of which was already closed,” the spokesperson told Fox News.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz listens during a hearing with the House Oversight and Accountability Committee at the US Capitol on June 12, 2025 in Washington, DC. Getty Images

The spokesperson added that Walz has “hired an outside firm to audit payments to high-risk programs, shut down the Housing Stabilization Services program entirely, announced a new statewide program integrity director, and supported criminal prosecutions.”

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In the 43-minute video published on Friday, Shirley and a Minnesotan named David travel around Minneapolis and visit multiple childcare and learning centers allegedly owned by Somali immigrants.

Many were either shuttered entirely, despite signage indicating they were open, or helmed by staff who refused to participate in the video.

YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a mega-viral video on Friday uncovering new parts of the alleged Somali aid scheme. X / Nick Shirley

One of the buildings they visited displayed a misspelled sign reading “Quality Learing Center.” The ‘learning’ center is supposed to account for at least 99 children and funneled roughly $4 million in state funds, according to the video.

Shirley appeared on Fox News’ “The Big Weekend Show” on Sunday evening and boasted about his findings. He joked that the alleged scheme was “so obvious” that a “kindergartener could figure out there is fraud going on.”

“Fraud is fraud, and we work too hard simply just to be paying taxes and enabling fraud to be happening,” Shirley said.

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Shirley was kicked out for trespassing in one of the centers. X / Nick Shirley
Shirley joked that the alleged scheme was “so obvious” that a “kindergartener could figure out there is fraud going on. X / Nick Shirley

“There better be change. People are demanding it. The investigation have been launched just from that video alone. So there better be change, like I said we work way too hard to be paying taxes and not knowing where our money’s going,” he added.

Many officials have echoed Shirley’s calls for change, with FBI Director Kash Patel even announcing that the agency surged extra personnel to investigate the resources doled out to Minnesota. He said this is one of the first steps in a wide-reaching effort to “dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said the agency was fielding additional personnel to investigate fraud in Minnesota. FNTV

Federal investigators say half of the $18 billion granted to Minnesota since 2018 could have been stolen by fraudulent schemes — amounting to up to $9 billion in theft.

As of Saturday evening, 86 people have been charged in relation to these fraud scams, with 59 convicted so far.

Most of those accused of fraud come from Minnesota’s Somali community.

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Shirley’s mega-viral video cracked 100 million views Sunday night.



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