US ‘Somali Fraud’ Scandal Requires A Determined Response – OpEd

The slow pace at which Democrats in Minnesota have addressed the enormous $9 billion so-called Somali fraud scandal — playing politics with it rather than seeing it as the crime that it is — has allowed the situation to worsen.

Last week, one of the principal suspects, Abdirashid Ismail Said, who was accused of orchestrating an $11 million Medicaid fraud scheme, failed to show up for a scheduled court date and is now on the run.

Said was allowed by the Democratic-controlled court system to post bail, reflecting how unseriously this issue is being taken. It is no surprise that a man who allegedly stole $11 million did not hesitate to put up the $150,000 bond that the court required for him to go free pending trial — without having to surrender his passport.

Of course, Said then skipped town, running from the court hearing. With him being accused of stealing $11 million in federal Medicare funds earmarked for home healthcare agencies to help seniors and the poor, it should have been obvious he would not show up.

Democrats have not taken the evidence of fraud seriously and have approached the controversy as a political fight rather than a criminal enterprise that hits the pockets of the state’s taxpayers.

The Trump administration has also erred by playing into the politics of the crisis, placing the blame solely on the Democrats simply because that party dominates Minnesota, where the fraud has been carried out by criminal elements in the Somali immigrant community. 

Despite the involvement of Somali Americans, the Somali immigrant community has a benefactor of sorts in Rep. Ilhan Omar, who is Somalia-born herself and was elected to Congress with the community’s support in November 2018. Politicizing the accusations and the evidence has allowed her to deflect attention from the crimes by accusing the accusers of “playing politics.”

It would not be difficult for Said to disappear into the large Somali community in Minnesota, maybe even in Omar’s own congressional district in Minneapolis, where there has been a political reluctance to prosecute the fraud or even acknowledge that it is driven in large part by Somali immigrants.

Court records show that most of those charged with stealing state and federal funds earmarked to help those in need, including legal immigrants, seniors and the poor, are Somali. And that fact has given Omar and other Democrats the shield to argue that the prosecution of the fraud is racist.

The fact is, however, that the Somali criminals who account for 90 percent of the charges represent only a small portion of America’s Somali immigrant population, which is estimated to be about 110,000, with nearly 80 percent living in the Democratic-controlled Twin Cities.

Instead of responding to the fraud accusations, evidence and charges with politics, leaders like Omar should be attempting to root it out for the sake of the prestige of those in the community who are law-abiding citizens.

By refusing to acknowledge the nature of the fraud in Minnesota, Omar and other Democrats have given political cover to criminals. 

The majority of the Somali immigrant community are in America legally, having fled the civil war in Somalia in the 1990s. But many are believed to be in the country illegally, circumventing the immigration system that seeks to vet new arrivals. However, we do not know how many are in the US illegally because Democrats have fought to protect illegal aliens and instead use the more docile term “undocumented,” which suggests that they simply failed to get formal approval to live in the country.

The inability to discern between documented and undocumented has allowed illegal aliens to thrive without fear.

Nobody is going to crack down on the fraud carried out by members of the Somali immigrant community in Minnesota if they do not acknowledge all the basic facts.

Clearly, Somalis are not the only people engaged in welfare fraud or other crime in America’s immigrant communities. But if they really cared about the image of Somalis in America, then community leaders like Omar would be at the forefront of demanding that the criminals be identified, weeded out from the community and prosecuted.

We have not yet seen an expression of the determination that is necessary to protect the Somali community and taxpayers alike.