Temporary Means You Got to Go, Bye Somalis. Go home, rebuild Mogadishu.

Minnesota’s Little Mogadishu Faces Mass Return as Fraud Scandals and Al-Shabaab Funding Allegations Seal the Deal

Allegations of fraud surrounding Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders from Somalia, particularly in Minnesota’s Somali community, have escalated into a national firestorm, painting a picture of systemic abuse where taxpayer-funded welfare benefits are siphoned off and funneled overseas to fuel both personal enrichment and, alarmingly, terrorist activities.

President Donald Trump has once again reminded the nation that “temporary” isn’t a synonym for “permanent.” On November 22, 2025, via his Truth Social platform, Trump announced the immediate termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somali nationals in the United States, zeroing in on the fraud-riddled program that’s long overstayed its welcome.

Somali terror group al-Shabab ‘taking a cut’ of millions in stolen Minnesota taxpayer money from welfare fraud scheme: report

At the epicenter is Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program, which has been exploited through phony autism therapy claims—billing skyrocketed from $3 million in 2018 to a staggering $399 million in 2023—allowing fraudulent providers to pocket huge amounts of money while delivering no services to vulnerable children.

These schemes, orchestrated by networks of Somali-owned clinics and nonprofits, extend to broader social services fraud, including the infamous $250 million Feeding Our Future scandal, where federal COVID-19 child nutrition funds were embezzled via ghost meal sites and sham invoices. SNAP benefits, while not the primary vector here, factor into the mix as part of the welfare ecosystem that TPS recipients access, with reports indicating over-reliance and misrepresentation of household needs to maximize payouts.

The pilfered cash doesn’t stay stateside; it’s laundered through informal hawala networks—untraceable money transfer systems prevalent in the Somali diaspora—and remitted to Somalia, totaling $1.7 billion in 2023 alone, exceeding the nation’s entire government budget.

Federal counterterrorism sources claim Al-Shabaab, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist group, skims a “tax” on these inflows, effectively making Minnesota taxpayers the terror outfit’s largest indirect funder, with millions traced to extremist coffers despite senders’ possible unawareness.

Recent federal indictments of dozens, including Somali defendants like Moktar Hassan Aden, underscore the crackdown, but critics argue the TPS extensions have enabled this “welfare piracy” by granting work authorization without rigorous oversight, turning a humanitarian safeguard into a loophole for exploitation.

Let’s start with the basics, because even our elected officials in Minnesota seem to have forgotten them. TPS, enacted under the Immigration Act of 1990, is a humanitarian tool designed to shield nationals of designated countries from deportation when their homelands are ravaged by armed conflict, environmental disasters, or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that make return unsafe.

It’s not a green card, not a path to citizenship—it’s a timeout, renewable at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security, but always with an eye toward resolution back home. Somalia was first designated in 1991 amid the chaos of civil war and famine, a designation extended repeatedly by administrations of both parties, most recently by the Biden team through March 2026

“Temporary” has stretched into decades for over 500,000 TPS holders nationwide, with Somalis numbering in the tens of thousands. What was meant as a bridge has become a bypass around real immigration reform. Courts have upheld terminations before, and while Biden’s extension lingers until 2026, Trump’s move signals the end of endless deferrals.

Go home, rebuild Mogadishu as you’ve rebuilt Cedar-Riverside. Make Somalia the success story America helped inspire. And if conditions worsen? We’ll be here—temporarily. Bye for now.