In a video that began circulating last month, a YouTuber visited day care centers in Minnesota and accused the facilities of not providing any services or having any children present. The video has since gone viral and has drawn attention to Minnesota’s Somali population, which is the largest in the country. Federal child care funding has been frozen for the state and immigration enforcement has increased.
23-year-old Nick Shirley, a conservative YouTuber and self-described independent journalist, posted a video late last month in which he “visited nearly a dozen day care centers in Minnesota, alleging they were receiving public funds but not actually providing any service,” according to CBS News. The video received over 116 million views on X.
Among the visited day care facilities was the Quality Learning Center, whose sign contained a typo that has since been corrected. This day care center received $1.9 million from Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program in the previous fiscal year.
The White House has deployed around 2,000 immigration enforcement officers to Minneapolis with the intention of cracking down on fraud and undocumented immigration, “noting that a majority of defendants charged in the fraud cases are of Somali origin,” according to The New York Times.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced earlier this month that he is ending his bid for re-election amidst the fraud scandal. CBS News reported that “the two-term Democrat and former vice presidential candidate has faced scrutiny in the last several months over his handling of Medicaid fraud, which has cost the state as much as $9 billion, according to a top prosecutor.”
“I don’t think any governor in history has had to fight a war against the federal government every single day,” Walz told reporters following his decision to not seek a third term.
On January 7, 37-year-old Renee Good was fatally shot by an immigration enforcement officer. Good was a U.S. citizen who lived in Minneapolis with her wife. Officials at the local and federal level are divided about the events leading up to the shooting. President Trump and others at the federal level have argued that the agent acted “in self-defense,” while Minnesota officials deny this claim.
“This was an attack on law and order,” Vice President JD Vance said two days after the shooting, asserting that journalists have inaccurately portrayed the fatal encounter. “This was an attack on the American people. […] I can believe that her death is a tragedy while also recognizing that it is a tragedy of her own making.”
While the alleged fraud of day care centers run by Somali immigrants and the increased presence of immigration enforcement in Minnesota have mobilized Americans on both ends of the political spectrum, federal investigation of the fraud scandal is ongoing.
