A viral video used to justify a sweeping crackdown on Somali Americans in Minnesota has been thoroughly debunked by state investigators, who found the claims of widespread fraud at Somali-run child care centres to be baseless, according to a fact-check published by The 19th News.
The video, posted on 26 December by right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley, accused Somali American day care operators in Minneapolis of defrauding the state by collecting public funding whilst providing no services to children. The footage became a cornerstone of the Trump administration’s decision to freeze child care funding across five US states and intensify immigration enforcement targeting the Somali community.
But when state investigators conducted compliance visits to nine of the 10 centres featured in the video, they found normal operations with children present at all but one facility — which had simply not yet opened for the day — according to The 19th News.
The video’s claims were embraced at the highest levels of the US government, with Vice President JD Vance praising Shirley for doing “far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 [Pulitzer Prizes].”
Yet the evidence presented in the video amounts to nothing, investigators found. Shirley visited daycares, sometimes under false pretences, and was denied entry by suspicious staff. Because he could not see children through locked doors — a standard safety measure at child care facilities — he declared the centres fraudulent.
“These are not new issues, but they are being repackaged, and they are being promoted in ways to make it seem like there is an epidemic,” national child care expert Elliot Haspel told reporters this week, according to The 19th News.
Video Shows Nothing Conclusive
The video shows Shirley visiting day cares, sometimes falsely claiming he wanted to enrol a child. Workers occasionally opened doors but became suspicious when they saw Shirley recording and refused entry.
Shirley declared several sites fraudulent simply because they appeared closed from the outside, and he couldn’t see children. However, most child care centres keep doors locked with obscured windows for safety, and children typically remain in classrooms not visible from reception areas, The 19th News reported.
One day care told news outlets it denied Shirley entrance because he arrived with masked men, raising fears they were Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. At least one centre was closed during his visit because it opens later to serve second-shift workers’ children.
State Has History of Fraud, But Not at Epidemic Levels
While Minnesota has documented child care fraud cases, the scale is nowhere near what the video suggests, according to The 19th News.
A 2019 state investigation found several million dollars in fraud within Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program, where centres billed the state for children they weren’t serving. State prosecutors charged at least a dozen people and centres over five years prior to 2019.
A 2025 federal report found 11 percent of payments to sampled Minnesota centres in 2023 contained errors — above the 10 percent federal threshold but not necessarily indicating fraud.
“An improper payment is a child was present for 40 hours, and somehow the state paid only for 30 hours. Fraud is when you’re charging for kids that were never enrolled,” national child care expert Danielle Ewen explained to The 19th News.
Nationwide, only seven states since 2013 have exceeded the 10 percent error threshold, and no evidence exists of large-scale child care fraud nationally, according to a 2020 Government Accountability Office report cited by The 19th News.
Somali Community Targeted
The video’s main source, David Hoch — a lobbyist and former right-wing Minnesota attorney general candidate — received information about the centres from Republican staffers and has focused extensively on the Somali community, The 19th News reported.
In a now-deleted Instagram account, Hoch posted that “EVERY Somali in MN is engaged in fraud. ALL of them,” and referred to “demon Muslims,” according to reporting by The Intercept cited by The 19th News.
President Donald Trump has claimed “much of the Minnesota Fraud, up to 90%, is caused by people that came into our Country, illegally, from Somalia” and last month called Somali immigrants “garbage,” according to The 19th News.
Minnesota has the largest Somali population in the United States. About one in five child care workers nationwide are immigrant women.
Since the video’s release, Somali-run day cares have reported harassment through threatening phone calls and demands to see children. At least one centre was broken into, The 19th News reported.
Trump Administration Freezes Funds to Five States
Following the video’s release, the Trump administration froze federal child care funding to five Democratic-run states: Minnesota, California, Colorado, New York and Illinois. The freeze would stop federal funds from flowing to cover care for low-income children.
The five states sued, and a federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to release the funds while the case proceeds.
Officials had said funds would only be released “when states prove they are being spent legitimately.” Minnesota was given until Friday to provide additional documentation, including Social Security numbers for all 23,000 children receiving child care funds in the state, according to The 19th News.
It remains unclear what evidence justified freezing funds to California, Colorado, New York and Illinois.
All states must now submit additional documentation to access child care dollars, potentially slowing payments to centres and increasing the risk of day care closures.
“If that freeze were to go into effect, there are a whole lot of centres that run on a very thin margin, and most of their kids are CCAP,” Kylie Cooper, director of a Twin Cities child care centre, told The 19th News. “They would last less than a month before they’re closing their doors.”
About 95 percent of families receiving assistance in Cooper’s program are headed by single mothers, she said.
Andrew Nixon, a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson, declined to answer questions but said in a statement: “For too long, Democrat-led states and Governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch.”
