Excerpts
A viral video posted just after Christmas spurred an avalanche of news coverage, changes from the Trump administration, and congressional hearings that appeared to indicate that a massive trove of child care fraud was just uncovered in Minnesota.
Much of it has been misleading.
The video by right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley posted on December 26 purports to show that various Minneapolis day cares run by Somali Americans are not providing services to children despite receiving public funding. Although the video has already been debunked by investigators, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have seized on it. Vice President JD Vance said Shirley “has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 [Pulitzer Prizes].”
The fallout has been massive. In the past week, the Trump administration has frozen child care payments to five Democratic-run states and ramped up reporting requirements for all states receiving child care funds to cover services for the lowest-income kids. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, has suspended his reelection campaign over it.
But the real story behind child care fraud in Minnesota is far less nefarious.
Here’s what we actually know about child care fraud in Minnesota and elsewhere, and how day cares and families may be impacted by the new changes.
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What did state investigators find when they investigated the day cares in the videos?
State investigators conducted unannounced visits at the day cares in the viral video over the past six months as part of the typical licensing and auditing process, according to Tikki Brown, the commissioner of the Minnesota DCYF. An analysis of publicly available inspection records by The 19th found that most of the centers had unannounced inspections as recently as October, November or December.
After the video was posted, investigators from the state Office of Inspector General conducted compliance visits to nine of the 10 centers in the video (one of the centers in the video has been closed for several years and has not received funds in that time). They found normal operations and children at all but one, which had not yet opened for the day. Further investigations are being conducted into four of the nine facilities, but the state has not said what exactly it’s investigating.
Most of the centers in the video did have numerous state licensing violations against them regarding cleanliness, staff supervision and some recordkeeping around immunizations and allergies. But none of the violations against the centers were regarding fraud, according to state enforcement records.
Quality Learning Center, the center most prominently featured in the video because one of its signs misspelled learning, closed this week. Another center in the video, Mako Childcare Center, has been closed since 2022, Minnesota DCYF said.
There is evidence of one of the day cares in the video having a connection to prior fraud investigations. Fowsiya Hassan, the CEO of Minnesota Best Childcare Center, previously owned another day care called Sunshine Child Care Center that was raided in 2022 as part of an overbilling fraud investigation. No charges were brought.
Hassan sued the state last year over the raid, which led to the closure of Sunshine, claiming “licensing and fraud investigations in Minnesota have long been disproportionately targeted against Somalis.”
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