Two Christian resettlement groups took in at least $62 million to place tens of thousands of Somalis in Minnesota, a taxpayer-funded pipeline critics tie to ethnic enclaves and soaring welfare fraud.
The Post reported that Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services, now called Global Refuge, stood at the center of that effort. The two church nonprofits resettled an estimated 29,000 Somalis into the state since 1993.
They collected a reported $2,500 per refugee to cover food, initial housing, and social workers. Minnesota’s Somali population now tops 100,000. The same community sits at the heart of an estimated $9 billion in welfare fraud uncovered in the last year.
Federal immigration officials also raided the home of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali-born congresswoman whose district includes Minneapolis’s “Little Mogadishu,” as part of a criminal investigation. The timing put fresh scrutiny on how government contracts helped build the community that elevated her.
Parker Thayer, an immigration expert at the Capital Research Center, told The Post the total flowing into Minneapolis resettlement programs alone runs “in the hundreds of millions.”
Thayer put the scale in plain terms.
"This is a very big pile of government money and a whole bunch of different groups have come to get their own slice of it,"
Since 2021 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which oversees Catholic Charities, received $140 million in federal migrant resettlement contracts, Thayer said. The Biden administration oversaw the largest jump in living memory of those operations.
Catholic Charities Twin Cities closed its refugee and immigrant programs in 2018, a spokesperson said. Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota did not respond to a request for comment.
Thayer warned the controversy now hurts the groups’ broader work.
"It is hurting the ability of these organizations to fundraise in arguably more important areas of their work. I imagine a lot of donors are being pushed away by something that is very reasonably viewed as highly controversial by a lot of people,"
Thayer said resettlement agencies chose Minnesota for a reason. The state offered extremely generous social safety-net policies and welfare programs that made placement easier.
"They picked Minnesota because it had extremely generous state social safety net policies and welfare programs, which of course made resettling refugees there easier,"
Many Somalis did not stay where they first landed. Thayer noted refugees moved to Minnesota after initial placement in states such as South Dakota. Chain migration and family reunification then expanded the community further.
That concentration created isolated ethnic enclaves, Thayer argued, while large numbers arrived at once. He also pointed to travel patterns that raise questions about refugee claims.
"A lot of these people, while claiming to be refugees, you look at their Facebook pages, or you look at indictments and find that they routinely travel out of the US back to the place they are supposedly a refugee from,"
The same state now faces the fallout. An estimated $9 billion in welfare fraud, largely tied to the Somali community, has been uncovered in the last year. Related cases include a $250 million fraud suspect. Taxpayers are left holding the bill while federal agents pursue ongoing criminal investigation threads that reach into Omar’s circle.
Church resettlement work stretches back generations. During World War II, Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services helped Christians displaced from war-torn Europe. Those early efforts were largely funded from the pews, not federal contracts.
The model shifted after the Vietnam War. In 1975, Dang “Donald” Hawj and his pregnant wife Shoua became the first Hmong arrivals in Minnesota. The CIA had recruited Hmong fighters for a secret war against communist forces in Laos. Within a couple of years the Twin Cities Hmong population numbered in the thousands.
Then-Vice President Walter Mondale, a Minnesota Democrat, and Gov. Al Quie traveled to Asian refugee camps. Mondale headed the U.S. delegation to the United Nations in 1979 and delivered a speech that helped secure international resettlement commitments. He compared the moment to the failure to protect Jewish refugees before and during World War II.
When Somalia collapsed into civil war in the 1990s, the United States began taking in refugees. Minnesota’s operation was already running. The two church groups resettled the estimated 29,000 Somalis who followed. What began as a Cold War-era moral project grew into a large-scale federal contracting business.
Kelsey Reinhardt, president and CEO of CatholicVote, said Americans rarely grasp how generous the country has already been.
"I don’t think there’s a recognition of how generous the US has been,"
She grounded the debate in both faith and national interest.
"We have to look to the gospel origins on this. The gospel mandates the welcoming of strangers but there’s no unbridled welcoming of people, for example those who hate you or who are going to kill or steal from you,"
Reinhardt pressed the practical limits.
"We need to ask difficult questions of what our national sovereignty means. What extent are we able to assimilate people? Is the vetting sufficient?"
Those questions land harder after years of secondary migration into one metro area, the rise of concentrated enclaves, and the welfare-fraud totals now under investigation. Federal agents searching Omar’s home, reported in coverage of federal agents search Ilhan Omar’s home, only sharpened the focus on whether earlier placement decisions ignored assimilation capacity.
Omar’s district includes the Minneapolis neighborhood long labeled “Little Mogadishu.” The Post linked the nonprofit funding stream to the community that helped produce her political rise. Federal immigration officials raided her home as part of a criminal investigation. Related reporting has covered efforts to examine deportation options and the seizure of her cellphone and passport.
Relatives have been subpoenaed amid the immigration probe. Separate coverage has examined claims she could face deportation over alleged marriage fraud, while other accounts detail why some officials say removal remains complicated. ICE has also withheld FOIA records citing active enforcement proceedings.
None of that erases the core contracting record. Two church nonprofits took at least $62 million in government money, resettled tens of thousands of Somalis since 1993, and watched the state population climb past 100,000. Minnesota’s generous welfare rules acted as a magnet. Secondary migration filled the enclave. Fraud losses hit an estimated $9 billion.
Thayer summed up the structural problem: resettling large numbers into one area while creating isolated ethnic enclaves produces cultural and fiscal strain. The groups that once funded refugee work from the pews now depend heavily on federal contracts. When those contracts expand faster than vetting and assimilation capacity, the bill lands on taxpayers.
A nation can welcome genuine refugees without turning resettlement into an unaccountable contracting spigot that concentrates newcomers, strains welfare systems, and leaves fraud for someone else to clean up.
