Minnesota’s Somali community has been sending millions of dollars every year to Somalia that have ended up in the hands of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab, an investigation by the conservative City Journal revealed.
Citing multiple law enforcement sources, City Journal reported the community has sent the money to the East African country through “hawalas,” informal money-transfer networks.
Retired Seattle Police Department detective Glenn Kerns told City Journal that one Seattle network sent abroad $20 million in one year.
“The amount of money was staggering,” he told the outlet. Kerns, who investigated the phenomenon in Minnesota, said he found that the Somalis sending money were receiving Department of Homeland Security benefits.
“How does that make sense? We had good sources tell us: This is welfare fraud,” he said.
The former detective told City Journal that he then investigated the hawalas in Somalia that received the funds and found that significant amounts were ending up, either intentionally or not, in the hands of Al-Shabaab.
Another former official who spoke to City Journal said that Abu Shabaab benefits from all the money sent from the Minneapolis and Saint Paul areas of Minnesota to Somalia.
Al-Shabaab 'taking a cut' of all money sent to Somalia from Twin Cities
“Every scrap of economic activity, in the Twin Cities, in America, throughout Western Europe, anywhere Somalis are concentrated, every cent that is sent back to Somalia benefits Al-Shabaab in some way,” the former detective told City Journal.
“For every dollar that is transferred from the Twin Cities back to Somalia, Al-Shabaab is . . . taking a cut of it.”
Another source told City Journal that “the largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer."
“There is an issue here that is real, and if there is ever an event that is traceable back to these funds, or to people from this area, then this situation will take on a whole new set of optics.”
On Friday, US President Donald Trump announced that he was immediately terminating temporary deportation protections for Somalis living in Minnesota.
"Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
"I am, as President of the United States, hereby terminating, effective immediately, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS Program) for Somalis in Minnesota."