How misreading Somali poverty led Minnesota into its largest welfare scandal

Minnesota officials overlooked a billion dollar welfare fraud scheme by Somali immigrants due to fears of appearing racist after confusing immigrant poverty with systemic racism.

Howard Husock is the author of "The Projects: A New History of Public Housing" (NYU Press, 2025) and of "The Poor Side of Town: And Why We Need It" (Encounter Books). He is a senior fellow in domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He served on the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from 2013-17. 

This under-appreciated story began with what seemed to be an alarming 2019 investigation by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that labeled Minnesota "one of the most racially inequitable states" — a conclusion based on a poverty rate four times higher for Blacks than Whites. But this is the same state that had extended a warm welcome, through Lutheran and Catholic social service groups, to refugees fleeing the Somalian civil war; by 2024 some 107,000 residents of Somali descent would reside in Minnesota. The state had effectively imported large-scale Black poverty — but this had everything to do with immigration and nothing to do with Jim Crow and its legacy.