The Trump administration announced it had frozen child care fees for the state of Minnesota after a conservative YouTuber alleged that several centers run by Somali immigrants were taking public money without providing care.
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State officials have pushed back on allegations of fraud in the video.
Immigration enforcement recently tightened in the state, home to the largest population of Somali immigrants in the United States, after President Donald Trump said he did not want them in the country.
“We have frozen all child care payments in the state of Minnesota,” HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill announced in an X message on Tuesday.
He said the move comes amid “serious allegations that the state of Minnesota funneled millions of taxpayer dollars into fraudulent Minnesota child care centers over the past decade.”
The department said it would suspend the $185m (£137m) annual payment to the state, pending a full review of the centers in question.
O’Neill’s message added that HHS would introduce a “spending defense” system for all future payments to each state. This would require “justification and a receipt or photographic proof before sending money to a state,” he said.
Nick Shirley’s video, which has been viewed millions of times on multiple social media platforms since it was posted over the weekend, accuses nearly a dozen centers of providing no services or not having children present during Mr. Shirley’s visit.
Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families Commissioner Tikki Brown said the sites featured in the video have been subject to regular monitoring.
“While we have questions about some of the methods used in the video, we take the concerns the video raises regarding fraud very seriously,” she said.
State officials also told CBS News, the BBC’s U.S. media partner, that they visited some sites again this week.
Two of them had already closed their doors, they added.
CBS found no evidence of fraud when it reviewed the centers’ public records, although it found 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 past six months.
The most recent inspection took place on December 4 at Sweet Angel daycare, a center particularly noticed on social networks.
FBI Director Kash Patel said earlier this week that he was aware of “recent social media reports” and that fraud investigations in Minnesota had 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 the children, and this investigation remains ongoing,” Patel wrote on X.
In March, a federal jury convicted the head of the now-defunct Feeding our Future in Minnesota for what prosecutors called the largest pandemic aid fraud, which involved $250 million (£186 million).
Minneapolis is the latest target of Trump’s months-long crackdown on immigration and crime in cities across the United States.
Earlier this month, Trump said he did not want Somali immigrants in the United States, telling reporters that they should “go back to where they came from” and that “their country is not good for a reason.”
Minnesota is led by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, former Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 election.
Walz, who has clashed with Trump on immigration and other issues, said: “We appreciate any support in criminal investigations and prosecutions.” But launching a PR stunt and indiscriminately targeting immigrants is not a real solution to a problem. »
