Kristi Noem says half of Minnesota visas are ‘fraudulent,’ accuses ‘idiot’ Walz of doing it on purpose
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revealed in Tuesday’s cabinet meeting with President Trump that half of all visa holders in Minnesota submitted “fraudulent” applications.
“You told me to look into Minnesota and their fraud on visas and their programs: 50% of them are fraudulent, which means that that wacko Gov. (Tim) Walz either is an idiot or he did it on purpose — and I think he’s both, sir,” Noem said, prompting chuckles in the room.
“He brought people in there, illegally, that never should’ve been in this country, said they were somebody that they’re not, they said they were married to somebody who was their brother or somebody else,” added the DHS chief, in a possible reference to accusations that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) wed her sibling.
Noem also said those who submitted “fraudulent visa applications signed up for government programs, took hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers, and we’re going to remove them and get our money back.”
Former Minneapolis Sheriff Rich Stanek, who previously confirmed the high levels of fraud in the state, suggested that many of the immigration issues have been aided by locals’ generally affable nature.
“Minnesota has always been a very welcoming place,” said Stanek, who spent 12 years overseeing Minneapolis law enforcement as Hennepin County Sheriff.
“But when people say ‘Minnesota nice,’ they simply didn’t ask. Or they ignored it.”
Of at least 1,000 immigrant households that US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) visited during a two-week period, nearly half were engaged in some form of immigration fraud.
USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow told reporters after the operation concluded that “officers encountered blatant marriage fraud, visa overstay, people claiming to work at businesses that can’t be found, forged documents, abuse of the H1B visa system, abuse of the F1 visa, and many other discrepancies.”
Trump, in the same meeting, tore into Somali immigrants, saying that “they contribute nothing.”
“I don’t want them in our country,” the president added, ripping Omar as “garbage.”
“These are people who do nothing but complain,” Trump continued. “They complain, and from where they came from, they got nothing. … When they come from hell, and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”
Omar’s family fled Somalia during the country’s civil war in 1991, decamping to a refugee area in Kenya before being granted asylum in the US.
They settled initially in Arlington, Va., before moving up to Minneapolis in 1997.
The future “Squad” congresswoman became a US citizen in 2000.
Trump and Omar have traded barbs before, and during his previous administration, she accused him of “stoking white nationalism bc you are angry that people like us are serving in Congress and fighting against your hate-filled agenda.”
Both the US House Oversight Committee and Treasury Department announced Monday that they were probing a “massive fraud” scheme involving Somali immigrants bilking more than $1 billion from taxpayers as part of funding meant to feed schoolchildren in the state.
A COVID-era food relief program that sent money to nonprofits, particularly in the Minneapolis area, ended up funneling taxpayer funding to those organizations’ employees, many of whom were Somali.
They then spent lavishly on luxury cars and real estate holdings — while other funding streams purportedly flowed back to the Somali terrorist organization al-Shabaab.
As a result, the feds have prosecuted 78 scammers and convicted 59 linked to the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, named for the nonprofit that pocketed at least $250 million in taxpayer funding.
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