As the extent of the Somali welfare fraud scam in Minnesota began revealing itself late last year, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed something that should have revolted every American: We, the taxpayers, were apparently the biggest funder of a terror organization linked to al-Qaida.
Not anymore, if Bessent and and President Donald Trump’s administration have anything to do about it.
Speaking on Fox News on Thursday night, Bessent announced that those who were on public assistance must check a box before sending remittances abroad, and that the administration would be pushing regulations which would forbid those on public aid from sending money to other countries.
“From now on, anyone who wires money out from one of these money service businesses has to check a box saying whether they are on public assistance,” Bessent told Laura Ingraham.
“And if you are on public assistance, we will start pushing that you cannot wire money out of the country.
When asked what happened if they didn’t tell the truth: “Well then, that’s a crime — lying on the federal form,” Bessent said.
“The American people, our generosity, has been taken advantage of,” Bessent said.
“Our generosity is funding [Somali terror group] al-Shabab and Iranian interests,” Ingraham responded.
Bessent concurred: “The money’s supposed to go for alleged asylum seekers and their families and children,” he said.
“If you’re wiring money out of the country, one of two things must be true: You are getting too much money, and your benefits should be cut, or you were part of this conspiracy.”
🚨 JUST IN: Sec. Scott Bessent is now moving to BAN anyone that receives government assistance from wiring money out of the country after Somali fraudsters were caught in Minnesota
“If you are wiring out of the country, you’re either getting TOO MUCH or you’re part of this… pic.twitter.com/TMfbNPo1b5
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 9, 2026
The link to al-Shabab, and the extent to which American taxpayer money was using to fund it, was revealed in a City Journal article by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo in November, as the scandal began to hit Democrats hard.
“The largest funder of al-Shabab is the Minnesota taxpayer,” a confidential source told the reporters.
City Journal’s investigation revealed that very much might be true:
The Somali fraud rings have sent huge sums in remittances, or money transfers, from Minnesota to Somalia. According to reports, an estimated 40 percent of households in Somalia get remittances from abroad. In 2023 alone, the Somali diaspora sent back $1.7 billion—more than the Somali government’s budget for that year.
Our investigation reveals, for the first time, that some of this money has been directed to an even more troubling destination: the al-Qaida-linked Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab.
According to multiple law-enforcement sources, Minnesota’s Somali community has sent untold millions through a network of “hawalas,” informal clan-based money-traders, that have wound up in the coffers of Al-Shabaab.
According to Glenn Kerns, a retired Seattle Police Department detective who spent 14 years on a federal Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), the Somalis ran a sophisticated money network, spanning from Seattle to Minneapolis, and were routing significant amounts of cash on commercial flights from the Seattle airport to the hawala networks in Somalia.
One of these networks, Kerns discovered, sent $20 million abroad in a single year. “The amount of money was staggering,” Kerns said.
Beyond the obvious fact that the largesse of the American taxpayer shouldn’t be going to an al-Qaida organization, there’s the equally sane argument that it shouldn’t be going anywhere outside of the United States. Public assistance is for the U.S. public, for their survival in the United States. It is not for the survival of someone in Somalia, or Suriname, or Switzerland, or any other country that begins with the other 25 letters of the alphabet, no matter how rich or poor it may be.
This is common-sense stuff. The fact that it took a massive Somali fraud scheme and its connection to a terror group for an administration to even follow up on this is mind-blowing. That being said, it’s being done now — and while you can’t change past stupidities, you can certainly use them as guidance for future law.
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