Homeland Security agents were in Minneapolis on Monday “conducting a massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said.
Two DHS officials told CBS News that agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations branch were expected to inspect over 30 sites in the city on Monday alone.
Noem and DHS posted videos of HSI agents inspecting several sites, including one that appears to be a smoke shop.
Many of their targets came not from tips from the FBI, but from a video posted on social media over the weekend. The viral video, posted by conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley, alleged nearly a dozen day care centers in Minnesota that are receiving public funds are not actually providing any service.
HSI has historically investigated criminal activity with an international or immigration nexus, such as child exploitation, drug smuggling, identity theft and fraud. Under the second Trump administration, many HSI agents have been assigned to work alongside ICE’s immigration enforcement branch to find and arrest immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.
Asked whether the effort in Minneapolis is focused on the suspected fraud there or immigration enforcement, a senior DHS official said, a “little of everything.”
The HSI investigation comes a day after FBI Director Kash Patel called previous fraud arrests in Minnesota “just the tip of a very large iceberg.” He said that the agency has “surged personnel and investigative resources” to the state to investigate fraud.
Earlier this month, federal prosecutors said the total fraud in Minnesota’s Medicaid programs could be as much as $9 billion, a figure that Gov. Tim Walz and other state officials have disputed.
The accusations from federal prosecutors prompted a group of Minnesota House and Senate Republicans on Monday to call on Walz to resign. In response, the governor’s office said Walz has been working for years to crack down on fraud and has asked the state Legislature for more authority to take aggressive action.
This summer, Walz agreed with a previous estimate from First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson that fraud across all programs, including the Feeding Our Future scheme, which is not a DHS-administered program, could total $1 billion.
Thompson told reporters that there are federal investigations into all 14 of the Medicaid programs deemed “high risk” for fraud, which are also subject to a third-party payment audit.
More than 90 people have been accused, and in many cases convicted, of bilking hundreds of millions of dollars from the state, putting Walz’s administration in the hot seat and drawing attacks from President Trump.
