Minnesota Anti-ICE Relief Fund Shut Down After Fraud Flags
Minnesota had already been through Feeding Our Future, the roughly $250 million fraud case involving a federal child-nutrition program during COVID.
Hennepin County set up a $2 million fund to blunt the economic sting of a federal immigration enforcement operation it opposed. Fraudsters moved in almost immediately. More than 200 of 300 applications were flagged as potentially fake, and the program is now dead.
Commissioners approved the Small Business Recovery Fund in March. Grants ranged from $3,000 to $10,000 for businesses claiming at least a 30 percent revenue loss. About 80 of those 300 applicants made it through the review. The county distributed roughly $500,000 before pulling the plug.
Hennepin County Commissioner Jeffrey Lunde told CBS Minnesota that officials were finding more suspicious applications as the review went on.
“You know what? We’re getting diminishing results. We were finding more and more fraud.”
County officials said some applications included false information. They also found what appeared to be AI-written language repeated across multiple filings, sometimes with little changed beyond the business name and phone number. When county staff checked listed addresses, some of the businesses were not there. The county stopped processing applications after that.
The county says no fraudulent applications received money. Officials credited additional scrutiny, in-person inspections and other checks before grants were approved.
“We need to prosecute some people. People need to be held accountable.”
The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office was asked in June to review the applications for possible criminal activity. Investigators requested the records in July. The office says it will open an investigation once it receives them.
Operation Metro Surge began Dec. 1, 2025. At its peak, roughly 3,000 federal officers were operating in Minnesota. Local officials blamed the enforcement operation for lost sales and disruptions to businesses.
Some of the early estimates did not hold up as well once sales-tax numbers came in. FOX 9 found sales across several major industries in Minnesota’s two largest counties were down roughly $55 million during the period it examined.
Minnesota had already been through Feeding Our Future, the roughly $250 million fraud case involving a federal child-nutrition program during COVID and a web of fake nonprofits and sham businesses. Hennepin County then opened this fund and wound up flagging more than 200 of 300 applications. This time, staff caught most of it before the money went out.
CBS Minnesota reported that $1 million from the Hennepin County program will remain available for small-business financing. Another $500,000 is set aside for consulting and promotional assistance.
The grant applications stopped. The sheriff’s investigation has not started. And the next program is already being planned.
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Comments
Anyone up to trade to Canada Minnesota of Alberta?
Win for Canada double their GDP
Win for us losing billions in fraud Minnesota keeps looting from the country
I thought we annexed it and renamed ‘Gay North Dakota…’ 🙂
You don’t say
“Another $500,000 is set aside for consulting and promotional assistance.”
a.k.a. graft.
So, just to recap — the fraudsters descended upon a progressive warchest and pillaged it into oblivion.
Americans introduced the starling to beautify America(!) and remind people of old Europe.
Americans introduced kudzu for its beauty and shade, to combat extensive erosion, and as livestock fodder.
Americans introduced the common carp as a boon for sport fishermen.
Americans introduced Somalians and other Muslims to grow the federal government and the Democratic Party.
Here’s what they all have in common: none of them feel they owe you anything for the favor, and they’ll take their benefactors down as soon as anybody else whenever it benefits them.
No, just the opposite.
Explain your claim?
The headline describes this as an “Anti-ICE relief fund.” The text (and the link) describes it as a fund to bail out companies that were hurting because ICE deportations had hurt their businesses. This implies that they either hired illegal aliens, catered to illegal aliens, or were run by illegal aliens. Sounds like a progressive fund to me.
The text says fraudsters moved in to make invalid claims against the fund. That part’s real clear.
So what do you read that I don’t?
They did not “pillage it into oblivion”. According to the article, which is all we have to go on, they didn’t get one red cent from it.
Fine — they immediately attempted to pillage it, but unsuccessfully. All that proves is that Minnesota is way more careful protecting their progressive warchests than they are with our federal grants.
It doesn’t do anything to refute my main point, which is that the illegal alien fraudster class will just as soon bleed their progressive “allies” as their enemies.
Didn’t those Minnesotans lear anything?
Evidently they did. If they ever needed to. They were careful with the county’s money, and didn’t let it go to fraudsters. And when, with only 25% of the fund spent, they found that the genuine applications were drying up and were being outnumbered by the false ones, they shut the thing down rather than desperately pushing money out the door to justify their existence. Maybe they would have behaved that way even without the lesson of Feeding Our Future and the fake day care centers; but if they wouldn’t have, then they appear to have leared their lesson.
Oh… if your objection is that I used the word “pillaged” instead of “attacked and attempted to pillage,” it’s a quibble that doesn’t change my point at all.
Does Minnesota have any honest people in it any more? Unfortunately the honest people there have been severely negated by the criminals and politicians.
$500,000 went out to honest applicants. Nothing went out to dishonest ones.
So when it comes to their own money they’re careful and don’t let it just walk out the door without verifying that it’s going where it’s supposed to. Maybe the state should have put Hennepin County in charge of the Feeding Our Future program 🙂
But it’s not ‘their own money’, is it? It’s money they’re confiscating from taxpayers under threat of force, in order to ‘give’ to others to secure their votes.
THAT is the really outrageous aspect of all these ‘grant’ programs. OF COURSE people will try to scam it. Why wouldn’t they, when they see the biggest gangsters of them all, the ‘public servants’, stealing the money from others in the first place? Why not try to get your beak wet too?
That’s the problem with tax money – it goes to fund a lot of shit that we never voted for (in other words the politicians we elect do not represent us) and we don’t want.
It’s their own money in the sense that they’re the ones who took it from the taxpayers and have it available to do what they want with it. They decided to dedicate $2M of their budget to this purpose, and they were careful that it should go only to genuine applicants and not to fraudsters. Whereas when it’s federal money it’s not available to them; either they spend it on the designated program or they don’t spend it at all. So they have no reason to care if it’s wasted.
Minnesota has become the cesspool of the United States! Unbelievably, Waltz and Ellison are STILL in positions of power! Shame on all Minnesotans!
Their own programs get frauded out by their own team?
They aren’t even good crooks.