Ernesto Londoño

And the fear is not merely about running into immigration agents.

The fear also has become that this prevailing toxic rhetoric about Somalis and Somali culture has empowered people who are racist to do and say things that amount to harassment and hatred.

I spoke to a Somali-American immigration lawyer who said he's been flooded with calls, including from American citizens who report just being taunted and harassed on the street.

Yeah, I think the origin of this saga dates back to 2020.

And what happened was, you know, during the early weeks of the pandemic, state officials were really worried about whether people were being fed, were people going to be housed as many lost their jobs.

And as we all sort of collectively descended into this fearful moment induced by COVID-19,

And there was one specific program that state officials were managing to keep vulnerable kids fed during the pandemic.

What happened was that turned into a magnet for fraudsters who began registering as meal sites, saying that they were feeding tens of thousands of children, when in reality what they were doing was submitting bogus invoices and stealing a staggering amount of money.

That's right.

And even in the context of the stunning amount of money that people stole during the pandemic targeting a wide range of programs, including business loans and unemployment benefits, what happened in Minnesota was unique in just the scale.

And officials have described it as the most brazen case of its kind just by the sheer number of people involved and the amount of money that was stolen.

Well, 78 people have now been charged in the scheme in federal court.

The vast majority of them are Somali Americans.

More than 50 have already been convicted in these cases.

And initially, I think, many local officials were outraged that this happened.

But they essentially said this probably was a one-off abuse during the pandemic when there was a real sense of urgency about getting money to people who needed it.

However, in recent years, as prosecutors dug into court records and as they started interviewing witnesses, something really jarring came to their attention.

This was not, in fact, a one-off.

What they found was that networks of people had found loopholes in other programs that weren't COVID pandemic era programs, but just run-of-the-mill safety net programs designed to help people at risk of

homelessness, kids with autism, and that they were charging a staggering amount of money for services that weren't rendered.