Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, represented by Somalia-born Rep. Ilhan Omar, is coming under fire for widespread immigration fraud after a bombshell investigation announced last week.
Immigration officers from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted over 1,000 site visits across Minneapolis-St. Paul found evidence of fraud, non-compliance, or public safety or national security concerns in 275 cases — roughly 44% of cases interviewed.
Dubbed Operation Twin Shield, the effort focused on site visits and targeted verifications for applicants and petitioners with pending immigration benefits who matched specified risk criteria.
“What they found should shock all of America,” said USCIS Director Joseph Edlow during a press conference last week. “Officers encountered blatant marriage fraud, visa overstays, people claiming to work at businesses that can’t be found, forged documents, abuse of the H-1B visa system, abuse of the F-1 visa, and many other discrepancies.”
Omar’s district includes the city of Minneapolis and several of its surrounding suburbs. And while USCIS officials didn’t identify a specific group of fraudsters, the Twin Cities experienced a massive uptick in Somali refugees and immigrants going back decades.
Are Omar’s constituents copying her own tactics or moving there since she promotes a Somalia-first agenda? The flow of migrants to the Twin Cities — particularly Somali migrants — has gained national attention since claims emerged Omar married her own brother so he could become a U.S. citizen, The New York Post reported.
The Post reported that more than 82,000 immigrants from the East African country live in Minnesota, and Omar’s district has the nation’s largest Somali community.
Retired Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek estimated Minnesota’s Somali population between 86,000 and 125,000, and that was back in 2012 when he testified about Somali gangs before Congress, according to a previous Fox News Digital report.
Omar’s ties to Somalia helped her get elected in 2016 to the Minnesota House of Representatives and later to Congress in 2018. Omar is a progressive Democrat and one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress
And another coincidence — one of the categories of fraud raising an eyebrow is marriage fraud.
USCIS investigators found evidence of sham marriages, fabricated death certificates and “an alien engaged in marriage fraud by taking advantage of an elderly U.S. citizen spouse, including subjecting the spouse to elder abuse and exploitation,” USCIS said in a press release.
The Twin Cities were chosen because the “data” showed it as a hotspot for “manipulation and misuse of the immigration system,” officials said, with cases of marriage fraud found to be a particular problem, The New York Post reported.
In a separate case of fraud, the U.S. Department of Justice in 2022 filed federal charges against 47 defendants in a $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme. The criminal case involves a large network of Covid relief fraud — and many of the suspects are Somali and hail from Minnesota, Not the Bee reported.
The scheme included fake food distribution sites, shell companies and the submission of false claims for meals. The DOJ called this network “the largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the nation.”
“The DOJ is still finding and arresting new suspects who stole American money to line their own pockets, and in many cases, send to Somalia — the failed state run by warlords on the East African coast,” Not the Bee wrote.
Regarding Operation Twin Shield, the “first of its kind” immigration fraud detection effort took place Sept. 19-28 across Minneapolis-St. Paul and surrounding areas. Edlow called the investigation a “success” that could soon be repeated in cities across the country.
“I want the American people to know that we are declaring war on immigration fraud,” Edlow said during the news conference. “What has been uncovered by these diligent officers over the past two weeks, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.”
Minnesota has sizable immigrant populations from countries like India, Vietnam and Mexico, but its Somali residents have been a growing concern for years.
The first refugees from Horn of Africa started arriving in the 1990s as Somalia descended into a violent civil war and famine.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz opened the door to Somali immigrants with his lax policies including providing driver’s licenses, a tuition-free college program and free health care for illegal immigrants.
Somali gang issues have plagued the Twin Cities over the last two decades, Fox News Digital reported. And the state accounts for 25% of all ISIS recruits in the country, according to Minnesota nonprofit American Experiment.
Besides gang activity, credit card fraud and burglaries have been on the rise, while in some extreme cases recruitment to overseas terror organizations like ISIS have been encountered, Stanek said.
