First, a viral video. Then a surge of federal resources to investigate alleged child care fraud in Minnesota

By Zoe Sottile, Andy Rose, Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security say they are surging resources into Minnesota to investigate allegations of fraud there, including at child care centers, in the latest show of federal force in the state — home to the country’s largest Somali population.

The investigation comes weeks after ICE launched operations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area to specifically target undocumented Somali immigrants, precipitated by revelations about widespread fraud against the state as well as President Donald Trump’s comments that he “doesn’t want” Somalis in the country.

The stepped-up effort also comes just days after YouTube content creator Nick Shirley, who has created anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim videos in the past, posted a viral video in which he claimed to find widespread fraud at Somali-run child care centers. The video, which includes limited evidence for the creator’s allegations, has received more than 1.5 million views on YouTube as of Monday evening and was retweeted by Vice President JD Vance and former Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk.

One law enforcement official told CNN the buildup of DHS agents in Minneapolis on Monday, including visits to some 30 businesses, was due in part to the video.

Responding to a post on X about the alleged fraud, Vice President JD Vance — increasingly at the forefront of the administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric — said, “they’re stealing both money and political power from Minnesotans.”

By Monday, DHS began posting videos showing agents from Homeland Security Investigations entering what it called “suspected fraud sites.”

Here’s what we know about the investigations and the viral video.

Surge follows viral video

What officials called a surge of federal resources follows a viral YouTube video by Shirley, a 23-year-old self-styled independent journalist who posts content on social media with a conservative bent. In the video posted Friday, Shirley visits and tries to enter several child care centers in Minnesota he suggests are not actually operational, although he claims they’re receiving government funding through the state’s Child Care Assistance Program, or CCAP, which provides child care funds for low-income families.

Shirley does not specify the days when he visited most of the centers, which he claimed were Somali-run, saying only he visited one at “midday.”

CNN is looking into the centers identified in the video and has reached out to several of them. The video also shows Shirley escorted out of one building by police after reports he was trespassing and harassing people.

“While we have questions about some of the methods that were used in the video, we do take the concerns that the video raises about fraud very seriously,” Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families Commissioner Tikki Brown said in a Monday news conference, CNN affiliate KARE reported.

CNN has reached out to Shirley for comment on the video.

A spokesperson for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told CNN two of the centers featured in the video were closed. But a Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families spokesperson later clarified that one of them – Quality Learning Center – ultimately decided to remain open, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Ibrahim Ali, a manager at Quality Learning Center who said his parents own the facility, told KARE on Monday that Shirley’s video was recorded when the business was scheduled to be closed. A sign on the door says its operating hours are 2 to 10 p.m.

“There’s no fraud going on whatsoever,” Ali told KARE.

One of the most viral aspects of Shirley’s visit to Quality Learning Center – the word Learning being misspelled as “Learing” over the door – was a mistake by a sign maker, and the mistake is being fixed, Ali said.

A state licensing review for the business from June lists several violations – including a lack of required training for some staff and inadequate documentation for medications – but nothing suggesting the business was unoccupied.

The state Department of Human Services says CCAP payments to day care facilities can be withheld for fraud, but not for “licensing violations alone.”

CNN tried to reach Quality Learning Center on Monday at phone numbers for the business and its point of contact listed in state records, but there was no answer at those numbers.

It is not unusual for child care centers to keep their doors locked or to require a key card for entry due to safety concerns, according to Clare Sanford, the vice president of government and community relations for the Minnesota Child Care Association. And most child care centers would be especially wary of allowing someone filming to enter due to concerns about children’s privacy, she said.

She added although it would be unusual for a center to operate without any children at all, it’s not rare for centers to operate below their official capacity. CCAP funding — the kind of funding Shirley says is being stolen — is based on the eligible children enrolled at a facility, not its total capacity.

Child care centers face strict regulations in Minnesota, Sanford told CNN. Under the law, each licensed center should be visited at least once a year by an unannounced licensor, who spends hours running through a checklist of roughly 400 items, she explained. Newly opened centers face even stricter scrutiny, as part of a recent bid to combat fraud: They can expect four visits in their first operating year, three of them unannounced.

The video does not address those regulations. Its explosive impact is one example of the growing power of the right-wing media ecosystem, largely fueled by independent creators whom the president has favored over traditional news networks. Shirley was invited to speak with Trump at the White House in October, part of a roundtable discussion on Antifa with other conservative online creators. He previously filmed a video at the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, a look at “deported migrant scammers in NYC,” and an interview with Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Whitney Phillips, an associate professor of information politics and media politics at the University of Oregon, says she has “a hard time imagining the FBI or any government agency under Trump surging resources to a particular area if a left-leaning independent journalist made similar kinds of accusations.”

But “the government isn’t being steered in any directions it doesn’t want to go,” she added. “Right wing influencers give the government a reason to do what they were already planning on doing.”

Other administration officials, including the Department of Labor, secretary of education, and members of Congress have joined in with social media posts sharing Shirley’s video.

A law enforcement official told CNN the investigations announced Monday were spurred in part by the video and cover investigations into both immigration and fraud.

DHS and FBI say they are investigating fraud

On Sunday, FBI director Kash Patel said the bureau had already surged resources to Minnesota even “before the public conversation escalated online.”

“Fraud that steals from taxpayers and robs vulnerable children will remain a top FBI priority in Minnesota and nationwide,” he said in a post on X. “The FBI believes this is just the tip of a very large iceberg. We will continue to follow the money and protect children, and this investigation very much remains ongoing.”

Officials at DHS have announced their own investigation into alleged fraud.

“DHS is on the ground in Minneapolis, going DOOR TO DOOR at suspected fraud sites,” said the agency on X, along with a video of people in jackets marked “Police – HSI.” “The American people deserve answers on how their taxpayer money is being used and ARRESTS when abuse is found.”

Neither agency said in their posts if any arrests had been made in the latest crackdown.

Walz, meanwhile, has pushed back on accusations state authorities overlooked fraud. The governor “has worked for years to crack down on fraud and asked the state legislature for more authority to take aggressive action,” a spokesperson told CNN.

Five Republicans in the state legislature are calling on Walz to resign.

“People in our districts raise this issue constantly. It is the number one issue we hear about,” they said in a statement Monday. “They want to know why nobody is being held accountable. They want to know when somebody is going to fix it. And they want to know why the governor isn’t resigning.”

Speaker of the House Lisa Demuth said the chamber’s Fraud Prevention Committee has been investigating allegations of fraud regarding CCAP funding for months.

“No one’s lost their job,” Demuth said in a Monday news conference. “No one has been publicly disciplined in any way.”

Authorities have targeted fraud in the state previously, including in July, when the FBI raided five businesses in the Twin Cities which had allegedly committed Medicaid housing assistance fraud, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

A federal prosecutor said on December 18 that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 Minnesota-run programs since 2018 may have been stolen, according to The Associated Press. “The magnitude cannot be overstated,” First Assistant US Attorney Joe Thompson said. “What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It’s staggering, industrial-scale fraud.”

The wide-reaching investigations into fraud against the state build on previous investigations into fraud related to Covid-19 relief programs under the Biden administration.

Dozens arrested in previous fraud scandal

Most of the outrage regarding allegations of fraud in the Somali community has focused on Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit prosecutors say falsely claimed to be providing meals to needy children during the Covid-19 pandemic. Federal charges were brought against dozens of people — the vast majority of them Somali — beginning in 2022.

A raft of state audits into lax oversight of Minnesota funds was dismissed by Walz, a Democrat, CNN reported last year. This came amid allegations the Somali community’s strong support for — and contributions to — Democrats helped shield them from scrutiny.

An early investigation by the Minnesota Department of Education into alleged fraud by Feeding Our Future was stymied in part by a lawsuit filed by the organization and its founder, Aimee Bock — who is not Somali — alleging the investigation was discriminatory. She later voluntarily dropped the suit a week after federal agents raided her home and the nonprofit’s offices.

Bock was later convicted of seven federal charges, including bribery. She has not yet been sentenced, but a judge denied her request for a new trial.

Thompson, the lead federal prosecutor in the case, said authorities have recovered only about $60 million of the $250 million stolen in the Feeding Our Future conspiracy, according to the AP.

“I hear they ripped off — Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars,” Trump said. “Billions. Every year, billions of dollars, and they contribute nothing.”

President has long-standing grudge against Somalis

The fraud allegations — producing more than 40 convictions in the Feeding Our Future case alone — have proved a lightning rod for Trump’s invectives against Somalis. The president has long railed against Minnesota’s Somali diaspora, the vast majority of whom are US citizens. Around 84,000 people of Somali descent live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, many of whom resettled after fleeing a bloody and lasting civil war in their home country.

His attention to Somali immigrants and Americans of Somali descent date to his first presidential term, when he included Somalia on a travel ban alongside other Muslim-majority nations.

US Rep. Ilhan Omar, a naturalized citizen who came to the country from Somalia as a refugee, has been a frequent target of his ire.

Earlier in December, Trump said Omar and “her friends” shouldn’t be allowed to serve as members of Congress. He also called Somalis in Minnesota “garbage” who should “go back to where they came from.”

“When they come from hell, and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want ‘em in our country. Let ‘em go back to where they came from and fix it,” Trump said in a cabinet meeting this month. Vice President Vance loudly rapped his fist on the conference table in support.

Somalis and their advocates, however, point out the group convicted of fraud does not reflect the entire community.

“The Somali community in the Twin Cities is overwhelmingly made up of hardworking families, small business owners, healthcare workers, students, and taxpayers who contribute every day to Minnesota’s economy and civic life,” Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relation’s Minnesota chapter, told CNN in an email.

“When an entire community is stigmatized, the impact is immediate: Families live in fear, businesses suffer, and trust in public institutions erodes.”

“There’s a few bad apples, you know, that committed crimes and broke the law, ” Kamali Ali, a 39-year-old who came to the US from Somalia as a child, previously told CNN after the ICE operation targeting Somalis was announced. “But at the same time, you can’t do a collective punishment.”

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CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz, Omar Jimenez, TuAnh Dam, Rob Kuznia and Emma Tucker contributed to this report.