This is America’s Midwest state that is famous for being “good”.<\/p>\n
However, what is now unfolding in Minnesota is anything but \u2013 and it is turning into a very familiar story for British people.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t\t\tsign up for Sun<\/span> Newsletter\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThank you!\t\t\t\t\t<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n While we had Pakistani grooming gangs ignored by police and social services who were too afraid of being labeled racist, the “land of a thousand lakes” is facing a multi-million dollar education fraud perpetrated by Somalis.<\/p>\n And there are whispers that it was ignored for the same reason that UK authorities failed to crack down on grooming gangs.<\/p>\n Minnesota is home to the largest Somali population in the US, with an estimated 120,000 people living there.<\/p>\n One of its largest cities, Minneapolis, was deemed a “sanctuary city” by the Justice Department, where local police and other officials do not have to ask residents their immigration status, so no one fears deportation and crimes will be properly reported.<\/p>\n aviation tragedy<\/p>\n Horrific moment, the plane falls to the ground and everyone on board dies<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n storm chaos<\/p>\n Heavy dust cloud engulfs Cyprus and red weather warning issued in Holes hotspot<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n But in January, it was the focus of a brutal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) \u201cMetro Surge\u201d operation \u2014 in which more than 3,700 immigrants were arrested and Trump vowed to \u201ctake back\u201d Minnesota.<\/p>\n And the president has now doubled down on the state crackdown, after a YouTuber exposed systematic theft at fake childcare centres, fake hospices and a 3,000 percent increase in autism funding \u2013 all led by Somalian groups.<\/p>\n This comes after Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said that when his current investigation concludes, fraud in Minnesota-administered programs could exceed $1 billion.<\/p>\n YouTuber Nick Shirley came to fame earlier this year after a viral video showed him outside a hilariously misspelled Quality “Learing” center.<\/p>\n The soft-spoken and floppy-haired 23-year-old took viewers on a 42-minute tour of vacant daycare sites receiving government funding.<\/p>\n Incredibly, one of the women involved even planned to “flee the UK” following the revelations, he claims.<\/p>\n Now a minor online celebrity needs a 24\/7 bodyguard, Nick told me this week: “These daycare centers were costing a lot of money… then we go there one day of the week and there’s no kids there.<\/p>\n “The signs say they’re open – they should be open. We went to one – it said open from 7am to 10pm. We’re there at 11am and there’s no one there.”<\/p>\n A few weeks later, the Quality “Learing” facility closed, but not before spending approximately $2 million in taxpayer funds.<\/p>\n Shirley’s report has helped push the issue of benefits fraud to the top of the Trump administration’s domestic agenda and arrests are on the rise.<\/p>\n On Thursday, an investigation led by the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud led to the arrest of three nurses, a chiropractor and a psychologist in California on charges of a $50 million sham hospice scheme.<\/p>\n Raids are taking place across the country, where Shirley says: “100 per cent of people have said, ‘Enough is enough’.”<\/p>\n It’s a story we know all too well in Britain.<\/p>\n Last year in England, investigators revealed that thousands of students were recruited to claim millions in government-backed maintenance loans and tuition fees \u2013 often with no intention of studying.<\/p>\n In 2009, a Home Office investigation was launched after our sister newspaper, The Times, revealed that hundreds of people from Pakistan’s North West Frontier had paid at least \u00a31,000 to a gang to get into fake colleges.<\/p>\n And the Rotherham grooming gangs are a perfect example of where officers failed to investigate \u2013 because they were worried they would be seen as \u201cracist\u201d. <\/p>\n Ironically, Shirley told me that Britain inspired her early investigations \u2013 about immigration and the rise of Islam.<\/p>\n He said that when he visited the UK last summer, it was “completely different” from what he had imagined.<\/p>\n He said: “Then I realized, ‘If it’s happening here, it’s probably happening in the United States.’ So I started looking at the rise of Islam in America. It took me to Minneapolis, Minnesota.”<\/p>\n But what they found there made very different headlines.<\/p>\n Shirley told me that locals had “always heard” about allegations of fraud going on beneath the surface in Minnesota for years, “but no one had really gone out to show people what it was like”.<\/p>\n He added: “And fraudsters have been getting away with it for so long that they thought they could continue to rob our systems.”<\/p>\n Speaking on Harry Cole Saves the Waste, he explained: \u201cSo I went and made a video on Christian churches converted into mosques in Minnesota.<\/p>\n “And while I was there, the Minnesota locals said, ‘Nick, you’re here to make a video on fraud?’. I said, ‘Well, what fraud is going on?’. A woman spent hours telling me what was going on.”<\/p>\n Shirley even claimed that after her video expose of the daycare center fraud, “a woman tried to flee to your country, the beautiful country of the United Kingdom”.<\/p>\n This was not the first time fraud was linked to the Somali community in the state.<\/p>\n The so-called Feeding Our Future program to provide food to needy children was accused of embezzling $250 million during the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n The group claims to have served 90 million meals in less than two years \u2013 more than 120,000 meals per day at 300 sites in Minnesota.<\/p>\n\n
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