WASHINGTON — Minnesota’s lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan donned a hijab to express solidarity with Somalis in a local TV appearance amid federal and congressional investigations into fraudsters in their refugee community who bilked taxpayers out of as much as $9 billion.
“I am incredibly clear that the Somali community is part of the fabric of the state of Minnesota,” Flanagan said at Karmel Mall in Minneapolis alongside local officials in a video released by Somali TV of Minnesota on Thursday.
“I am here shopping today and just encourage other folks to show up, support our Somali businesses, support our immigrant neighbors, and I know that things are scary right now,” added Flanagan, a Catholic, while wearing the Islamic head covering.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), also a Catholic, fired back in a statement about Flanagan’s appearance that “anyone with common sense sees right through this stunt.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey also held a news conference Tuesday denouncing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities — including at Karmel, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents reportedly detained four on Monday.
The US Treasury Department and a powerful House committee are currently probing Somali-linked organizations and other nonprofits in the state accused of defrauding taxpayers out of around half of the $18 billion in federal funding provided to Minnesota since 2018.
“The magnitude cannot be overstated,” top Minnesota federal prosecutor Joe Thompson has said. “What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It’s staggering, industrial-scale fraud.”
The largest scheme convicted dozens of fraudsters from the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, who used more than $250 million in ill-gotten gains to splurge on luxury cars and real estate — sometimes in countries as far away as Kenya and Turkey.
“The programs are set up to move the money to people,” Walz told The New York Times in November. “The programs are set up to improve people’s lives, and in many cases, the criminals find the loopholes.”
Employees who claimed to work at the Minnesota Department of Human Services, one of the two state agencies that distributed the funds, slammed the Democratic the governor the following month for having been “100% responsible for massive fraud.”
Walz previously tried to blame a Minnesota judge for forcing some payments to Feeding Our Future to resume in 2021 — before earning a stern rebuke.
That same year, he also honored a fraudster at a separate nonprofit linked to the sprawling scheme with an “Outstanding Refugee Award.”
After extensive media coverage this year, Walz launched an anti-fraud task force in response, telling The Times: “The message here in Minnesota is if you commit a crime, if you commit fraud against public dollars, you are going to go to prison.”
The House Oversight Committee demanded records from Walz, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and other state officials and nonprofits by Dec. 17 as part of Chairman James Comer’s probe of the fraudulent scheme.
“Minnesota Governor Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison have provided initial productions to the Oversight Committee regarding the massive fraud that occurred under their watch, but the response is anemic,” Comer said. “While the Governor’s office claims it will continue producing documents, we intend to hold them to that promise. Any failure to fully cooperate with our investigation into the massive theft of taxpayer dollars will carry consequences.”
At one point in her Karmel Mall appearance, Flanagan gestured to the woman standing to her immediate left, Nimco Ahmed, the Somali-American state director of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party in Minnesota, calling her a friend of 25 years.
Ahmed has been quoted in Time magazine and Minnesota Public Radio articles as a “friend” and acquaintance of Somali men who returned to their native country in the 2010s to join al-Shabaab — a terror group that later received millions of the state’s welfare dollars due to the fraud scheme.
In 2011, Ahmed told Minnesota Public Radio News about the “young men leaving here, committing suicide bombings, killing innocent people, and they think they’re doing the right thing.”
“That’s the thing that’s unbelievable to me. So what’s not possible anymore?” she asked.
Ahmed also told Time two years later: “We feel doubly victimized, to lose our children and brothers to terrorism and to be painted as terrorists ourselves.”
Flanagan is one of three declared candidates — along with Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) and political outsider Billy Nord — facing off for the 2026 Senate Democratic primary nomination in the state.
It’s not the first time she’s chosen to wear clothing that sparked controversy, having put on a “Protect Trans Kids” shirt with a knife on it in March 2023 news conference at the state Capitol.
“This is life-affirming and life-saving health care,” Flanagan said. “When our children tell us who they are, it’s our job as grown-ups to listen and to believe them.”
Videos of the lieutenant governor and Senate hopeful wearing the black T-shirt went viral in August after a transgender gunman shot up a Catholic parochial school in Minneapolis, killing two children and injuring 18 others before taking his life.
“My heart goes out to all those affected by the terrifying act of violence at Annunciation Catholic school this morning,” Flanagan said in a statement following the shooting. “I’m grateful to the law enforcement who responded.”
Emmer claimed both Flanagan and Craig were “battling it out in an attempt to win over the far-left radicals in the Twin Cites.”
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) created the vacancy by choosing not to run for re-election.
Reps for Flanagan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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