Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is accusing President Trump of using fraud allegations to withhold funds from low-income state residents, after the White House froze all federal child care payments to Mr. Walz’s state.
“This is Trump’s long game,” Mr. Walz posted late Tuesday on X. “We’ve spent years cracking down on fraudsters. It’s a serious issue — but this has been his plan all along.”
“He’s politicizing the issue to defund programs that help Minnesotans,” the Democratic governor posted.
Deputy Health and Human Services Secretary Jim O’Neill and Assistant Secretary Alex Adams on Tuesday issued a statement and video announcing the halt of all payments to Minnesota and the implementation of more stringent requirements for child care payments.
The statement said all payments handled by the Administration for Children and Families, a component of the Department of Health and Human Services, will “require a justification and a receipt or photo evidence before we send money to a state.”
“We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud,” the statement said.
SEE ALSO: Trump administration halts federal child care payments to Minnesota amid fraud charges
The move comes after independent journalist Nick Shirley posted a video of himself going to Somali-run day care centers in Minnesota and seeing whether children were present.
Mr. Shirley said in a video that he uncovered more than $100 million in fraud at those centers. He visited multiple Minnesota day care facilities — including the Quality Learning Center in South Minneapolis — that had received a large amount of state funds but appeared inactive. The Quality Learning Center had a sign that spelled “learning” as “learing.”
Neither Mr. O’Neil nor Mr. Adams said how much money is being frozen. The funds went to Somali immigrants in Minnesota to run day care centers. Minnesota has the largest Somali community in the country.
A federal prosecutor said earlier in December that $9 billion or more in federal funds allocated to 14 state-run programs since 2018 may have been stolen.
Mr. Walz and others have disputed the amount but acknowledge the issue and insist they will get to the bottom of it.
Department of Justice officials have been investigating fraud allegations involving members of Minnesota’s Somali community for years. In 2022, federal prosecutors announced initial indictments in what they said was a $250 million scheme to defraud a child nutrition program.
However, some estimates have priced the fraud as high as $1 billion while state and federal investigations are ongoing.
Federal prosecutors have charged 77 people and alleged that Aimee Bock is the mastermind of the operation that defrauded the nutrition program. She was convicted in March on four counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of bribery and one count of conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery.
