State Senator Michelle Benson reacts at a news conference April 10, 2019, at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul to the state legislative auditor's report on combating fraud in the Minnesota Child Care Assistance Program.
Steve Karnowski/AP
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Steve Karnowski/AP
President Trump's administration announced Tuesday it is freezing child care funds in Minnesota following a series of scams in recent years.
Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill said on social media platform X that the move is in response to the “blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz responded in a post on X, saying scammers are a serious problem that the state has spent years fighting, but that the move is part of Trump's “long game.”
“He is politicizing this issue to defund programs to help Minnesotans,” Walz said.
The announcement came a day after U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials were in Minneapolis conducting a fraud investigation, visiting unidentified businesses and questioning workers.
The fraud has been under investigation for years, starting with a $300 million scheme at the nonprofit Feeding Our Future in which 57 defendants were convicted in Minnesota. Prosecutors said the organization was at the center of the nation's largest COVID-19 scam when defendants took advantage of a federally funded government program aimed at providing food to children.
Earlier in December, a federal prosecutor said half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that have supported 14 Minnesota programs since 2018 may have been stolen. Most of the defendants are Somali-Americans, they said.
O'Neill, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also said in a social media post Tuesday that payments across the U.S. through the Administration for Children and Families, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will now require “justification and a receipt or photographic evidence” before money is sent. They have also launched a hotline and email address for reporting scams, he said.
He also called right-wing influencer who posted the video on Friday claiming that he discovered that daycare centers run by Somali residents in Minneapolis had committed up to $100 million in fraud. O'Neill said he has asked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to conduct an audit of the centers that includes reports on attendance, licenses, complaints, investigations and inspections.
“We've turned off the money spigot and are detecting fraud,” O'Neill said.
The Administration for Children and Families provides $185 million annually to Minnesota for child care, according to Assistant Secretary of State Alex Adams.
“This money should help 19,000 American children, including toddlers and babies,” he said in a video posted on X. “Any dollar stolen by scammers is stolen from these children.”
Adams said he spoke with Minnesota's child services director on Monday and she could not say “with certainty whether these fraud allegations are isolated or whether the fraud is spreading throughout the state.”
Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2024, said fraud will not be tolerated and his administration will “continue to work with federal partners to ensure the fraud stops and the scammers are caught.”
Walz said the audit, due by the end of January, should provide a clearer picture of the extent of the fraud. He said his administration is taking aggressive action to prevent further fraud. He has long defended his administration's response.
Minnesota's most prominent Somali-American, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, urged people not to blame an entire community for the actions of a relatively few people.
