Misplaced Millions in MinneSomalia

In Minneapolis’ historic Whittier neighborhood stands the Gale Mansion, an Italian Renaissance Revival relic of the city’s illustrious past. In October 2022, this historic treasure sold for $2.6 million to an unlikely buyer—the Somali Community Resettlement Services (SCRS), a little-known nonprofit dedicated to providing welfare to Somali immigrants. The mansion now serves as the nonprofit’s headquarters.

Built in 1911 by pioneer descendants Edward Gale and Sarah Pillsbury—daughter of former Gov. John Pillsbury (R-MN) and the Pillsbury Company’s co-founder—its 24,000 square feet floorplan boasts antique luxuries that represent American gilded elegance like a central vacuum system, an intercom, and multiple laundry chutes.

An attorney by profession, Gale led multiple civic organizations, including the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, the Minneapolis chapter of the Red Cross, the Minneapolis Academy of Sciences, and the Hennepin County Planning Commission. He also served as president of the Minneapolis Bar Association. For decades, the family used its wealth to help develop the Minnesota Institute of Art (MIA), a block from their home.

After the couple’s death, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) purchased the mansion, where they hosted weddings and events. In 1977, the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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Despite the recent ownership change, the Gale Mansion still hosts events, thanks to a purchase agreement SCRS made with AAUW.

But how did a refugee aid group, which ran a $63,000 deficit in 2019, with less than $500,000 in revenue, suddenly afford a $2.6 million Gilded Era mansion?

The answer lies with Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) government, which pumps millions of taxpayer dollars into immigrant advocacy groups like SCRS. (The DFL is Minnesota’s official chapter of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).) Under DFL Governor Tim Walz, from 2022–2025, the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) averaged an annual giveaway to SCRS of roughly $500,000; meanwhile, the Department of Human Services donated $87,500 to the nonprofit from 2022–2024.

By 2021, SCRS's revenue had jumped eightfold to over $4.1 million, fueled mostly by taxpayers. This windfall included funds tied to the largest pandemic fraud scheme in U.S. history, which siphoned $250 million in federal funds intended for hungry children.

Although SCRS itself has not been charged with a crime, prosecutors showed the nonprofit took a "million-dollar cut" from COVID-19 pandemic-era nutritional funds. SCRS sponsored eight questionable food sites, which claimed to dish out thousands of daily meals and snacks. One of the SCRS site supervisors was among those convicted of conspiracy to bribe a juror.

The Minnesota nonprofit Partners in Nutrition reimbursed SCRS $2.9 million from the Minnesota Department of Education, which administered the federal nutrition program in the state. SCRS gave $1.8 million to these alleged food distribution sites while pocketing the remaining $1.1 million. A year later, SCRS bought the Gale Mansion.

But the gravy train didn’t stop with funds for feeding children.

In 2023, DEED gave SCRS $385,000 for tech training. This was part of a $2.5 million grant to nonprofits who promised to use the money to train candidates and help them with tech sector job placement if they identified as black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC)—whites needed not apply.

DFL Minnesota Rep. Hodan Hassan tried to dump another $6.5 million into SCRS's coffers, designating $5 million for housing and commercial spaces and another $1.5 million for job training. In 2018, SCRS founder and executive director Abdullah Sharif donated $1,000 to Hodan’s campaign.

As with the Gale Mansion purchase, after receiving its paycheck from taxpayers, SCRS did not let its administrative cut go to waste. In 2024, the nonprofit decided to expand to the town of New Hope, Minnesota. It bought an old funeral home to serve as its fourth office.

The New Hope city council had to pass a resolution to lift restrictions for the purchase to go through. That’s because the property formed part of a 1996 restrictive covenant that banned the land’s sale to tax-exempt entities through June 2026, and SCRS planned to pursue property tax exemption as an “institution of purely public charity.” Prematurely lifting the restriction cost the city $25,000 in lost tax revenue.

Almost two years later, the property still sits vacant. SCRS was supposed to build an adult daycare center—another huge source of Somali nonprofit fraud in Minnesota—a grocery store, and a gathering place for Somali Americans. Not only had it not touched the building, but its failure to keep up with landscaping had turned the property into an eyesore—a source of frustration for the city council. This prompted the city to hold a public hearing on the matter at the end of last year because it appeared the city had foregone those taxes for nothing. SCRS executive director Abdullah Sharif Hared blamed the delay on a failure to secure expected financing, allegedly because of greedy contractors and a lack of banks that follow Sharia Law.

Interestingly, Rep. Hassan withdrew her bills that would have beefed up SCRS’s finances around the time New Hope agreed to lift the former funeral home from its restrictive covenant and shortly after the extent of Somali fraud surfaced in court. She also announced she would not seek reelection.

Racism Extortion

SCRS doesn't stop at financial kickbacks—it weaponizes racial division to advance its agenda of raiding the public treasury for its fellow Somalis. Teaming with the ACLU, it sued the town of Faribault over a "crime-free" rental ordinance, crying racial bias. U.S. District Chief Judge John Tunheim sided with the plaintiffs, ruling the policy was "likely racially motivated" based on complaints from Somali renters. The city paid a $685,000 settlement and gutted the ordinance, making background checks optional and evictions harder. This is the same playbook fraudulent, Somali nonprofits used to intimidate the state when agencies began questioning the enormous grants these nonprofits and businesses were requesting.

Another unique partnership SCRS has is with Uber, which contracts with it and other nonprofits as part of a state-mandated program. These nonprofits act as de facto union representatives for Somali drivers, aiding drivers and mediating between them and the company when they get suspended from the platform. In 2024, Republicans managed to defeat an effort to provide a $2 million zero-interest car loan program for rideshare drivers in the state. 

But Somali nonprofits don’t limit themselves to meddling in negotiations between Somali workers and those workers’ contractors. In 2023, Rice County Court officials negotiated with Somali “elders,” including SCRS’s program manager, at a mosque about the Somalis’ demands for a "stake" in law enforcement. The Somalis pushed for a mediation board to handle family disputes outside traditional courts and "special kindness" for youth offenders, including for those guilty of reckless driving. They requested that their “elders” guide police in blending cultural norms, which would create a parallel justice system or one that supplants the American system for their own Sharia Law. 

Why Do Minnesota Democrats Tolerate This?

Why are hardworking Americans subsidizing the purchase of a luxury mansion, ethnic-specific projects, and extortion? A better question is: What do the DFL and its elected officials get out of bending to Somali immigrants’ whims and fattening their nonprofits’ coffers?

For the DFL, this is a fair exchange of money for power. 

SCRS is a member of Minnesota Voice, an affiliate coalition of nonprofits representing every conceivable minority group that “builds power with BIPOC communities.” The group’s sitting executive director Hwa Jeong Kim recently won a seat on the St. Paul city council as a DFL candidate. 

The group has given hundreds of thousands to SCRS since 2018 for “civic engagement,” a thinly veiled term for Somali American voter mobilization. 

Minnesota Voice is a member of State Voices, a national activist network funded by leftist mega donors like the Tides Foundation, the W.K. Kellog Foundation, and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. This is a tactic the Left has used since John Kerry lost the 2004 presidential election—reroute donations to tax-deductible leftist nonprofits to get more bang for their buck in turning out likely Democrats to the polls.

The DFL-Somali nonprofit coalition government in Minnesota also offers immigrant political elites a revolving door to state government. 

For instance, Anisa Hajimumin jumped from her role as Assistant Commissioner for Immigrant Affairs at DEED under Gov. Walz—where she steered policies favoring immigrant groups—to a consultant gig at SCRS. 

The grift is simple. The DFL doles out grants, and SCRS rallies the Somali bloc to the polls. This distorts democracy, echoing the immigrant boss politics of the Gilded Age—except now, the dominant immigrant group comes from a country that has been corrupt and destabilized since the end of colonialism, with a penchant for modern piracy. Is it any surprise federal prosecutors are now investigating up to possibly $9 billion in possible fraud from Medicaid-distributed funds alone in Minnesota? 

Although SCRS has not been charged with any crimes, it represents a prime example of legalized political corruption. This "charity" eats up taxpayer dollars under the guise of serving its own immigrant community—a discriminatory use of those dollars even if it were all legitimate. In return, it rallies the votes for the DFL to keep the gravy train running. Taxpayers fund this also because harvesting marginalized Americans’ votes is allegedly a public service.

The Gales’ legacy of patronizing the arts did pay off. Today, the MIA lives on as a reminder of what Minneapolis once was . . . and what it has become.

We Americans brought the Minnesota fraud on ourselves through our own hubris. Most Americans are good people who assume human suffering is externally caused rather than self-inflicted. This leads to asylum policies that welcome anyone and everyone, assuming people will not import the problems they left behind. 

Hopefully, we can muster the political will to turn off the asylum spigot and fully assimilate the children of naturalized citizens. Meanwhile, we must also remain vigilant against cronyism when taxpayer-funded grants are disbursed for alleged charity. In an increasingly heterogenous country with ethnic and religious groups who see the U.S. as a land to colonize, it would even be wise to cut out these nonprofit middlemen.

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