Trump administration says it’s withholding childcare funds from Minnesota amid fraud allegations

The Trump administration said it has frozen child care payments for the state of Minnesota after a conservative YouTuber alleged that several centres run by Somali immigrants were taking public money without providing care.

In a post on X on Tuesday, a top official with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cited the viral video, and said the agency would target “blatant fraud that seems to be rampant in Minnesota”.

State officials have pushed back against allegations of fraud in the video.

Immigration enforcement has recently ramped up in the state, home to the largest population of Somali immigrants in the US, after President Donald Trump said he didn’t want them in the country.

“We have frozen all child care payments to the state of Minnesota,” HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill announced in an X post on Tuesday.

He said this decision comes amid “serious allegations that the state of Minnesota has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to fraudulent daycares across Minnesota over the past decade”.

The department said it would suspend the annual payment of $185m (£137m) to the state, pending a full review of the centres in question.

O’Neill’s post added that HHS would introduce a “defend the spend” system for all future payments to every state. This would require “justification and a receipt or photo evidence before we send money to a state”, he said.

The video by Nick Shirley, which has received millions of views across multiple social media platforms since being posted over the weekend, accused nearly a dozen centres of not providing any services or having any children present when Mr Shirley visited.

Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families Commissioner Tikki Brown said the sites featured in the video have been subject to regular checks.

“While we have questions about some of the methods used in the video, we do take the concerns that the video raises about fraud very seriously,” she said.

State officials also told the BBC’s US media partner CBS News that they visited some of the sites again this week.

Two had already shut down, they added.

CBS found no evidence of fraud when it reviewed public records for the centres, although it did find citations related to safety, cleanliness, equipment, and staff training. All but two of the facilities mentioned in the video had active licenses and were all visited by state regulators in the last six months.

The most recent inspection was on 4 December at Sweet Angel Daycare, a centre that has drawn particular attention on social media.

FBI Director Kash Patel said earlier this week that he was aware of “recent social media reports”, and that investigations into fraud in Minnesota have been ongoing since the pandemic.

“The FBI believes this is just the tip of a very large iceberg. We will continue to follow the money and protect children, and this investigation very much remains ongoing,” Patel wrote on X.

In March, a federal jury convicted the head of the now-defunct organisation Feeding our Future in Minnesota for what prosecutors called the largest-ever fraud of pandemic aid, which involved $250m (£186m).

Minneapolis is the latest target in Trump’s months-long immigration and crime crackdown in cities across the US.

Earlier this month, Trump said he did not want Somali immigrants in the US, telling reporters they should “go back to where they came from” and “their country is no good for a reason”.

Minnesota is led by Democratic Governor Tim Walz, the running mate of former Vice-President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

Walz, who has sparred with Trump on immigration and other issues, said: “We welcome support in investigating and prosecuting crime. But pulling a PR stunt and indiscriminately targeting immigrants is not a real solution to a problem.”

By BBC News