US agents raid 22 Minnesota sites in social-welfare fraud probe

By Andrew Goudsward and Brad Brooks

WASHINGTON, April 28 (Reuters) – U.S. federal and state law enforcement agencies searched more than 20 locations in Minnesota on Tuesday as part of investigations into fraud in social-welfare programs, an area of intense focus by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The FBI and Homeland Security Investigations executed 22 search warrants, mostly at businesses, “as part of an ongoing fraud investigation,” a Justice Department spokesperson said.

Vice President JD Vance, who is leading a fraud task force at Trump’s behest, said the administration “will be relentless in exposing these fraudsters wherever they may be hiding.”

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat who lost his bid for U.S. vice president as the 2024 running mate of presidential candidate Kamala Harris, said in a statement that “today’s raids by state and federal law enforcement happened because our state agencies caught irregular behavior and reported it. That’s how the system is supposed to work, and our agencies will keep at it as long as there are fraudsters around to put behind bars.” 

The Minnesota Attorney General’s office said in a statement that its Medicaid fraud control unit was participating in five sites where search warrants were being executed, all facilities working with people with autism. The state’s main investigative body, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said in a statement it was partnering with federal investigators on multiple search warrant executions in the Twin Cities.  The state’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families said in an email that it was pleased to see state and federal agencies “taking strong action based on information we have shared with them.”

GOVERNOR WANTS PROBE INTO CITIZENS’ DEATHS

Pursuing benefits fraud in Minnesota was among the justifications Trump, a Republican, made for sending a surge of federal agents to the state beginning last December in an operation that drew widespread condemnation over the tactics of immigration agents and the killings of two U.S. citizens. Officials said Tuesday’s operation was not related to immigration enforcement. 

Walz, writing on social media, mentioned the two U.S. citizens killed by federal immigration agents this year, writing, “now let’s work on a joint investigation into the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good — instead of cherry picking when we seek justice and when we turn a blind eye.” 

Walz announced on January 5 he would not seek a third term as governor, saying he wanted to focus on the fraud scandal.

Trump has sought to connect the state’s Somali Americans and Somali immigrant communities to long-running scandals involving the theft of federal funds intended for social-welfare programs. In discussing those scandals, Trump in December called Somali immigrants in Minnesota “garbage” and said he wanted them sent “back to where they came from.”

The Justice Department has secured at least 63 convictions, dating back to 2022, from defendants facing charges related to Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit that claimed to distribute meals to schoolchildren but has been implicated in a large-scale fraud scheme. Many defendants in those cases were Somali Americans, according to local news reports.

The Justice Department has sought to sharpen its focus on fraud in federally funded programs, creating a new division and a Senate-confirmed assistant attorney general to lead the effort. 

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Brad Brooks; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Rod Nickel)