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Former Minnesota Viking and University of Minnesota football player Jack Brewer said he has seen up close high-profile deals involving the “elite” Somali population in Minnesota. In the process, he witnessed a demographic and class transformation in his home state.
“You go to one of them and they have Bentley and Maserati dealerships in Minnesota. I know this because I’ve done business with them and they’ve supported me as an athlete,” Brewer told Pak Gazette Digital.
“Now, you walk in there and some of their biggest customers are these Somali scammers who buy high-end cars in a state that gets four months of sunlight and decent weather. They drive sports cars like you’d see in Beverly Hills or South Beach Miami, all at the expense of the American taxpayer.”
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Images of empty daycare centers have become a sudden cultural flashpoint across the country. Minnesota is embroiled in a growing scandal after revelations that potentially billions of taxpayer dollars were fraudulently distributed to members of the state’s Somali population.
Brewer remembers the moment he began to see reality taking shape, when the Somali population suddenly began to grow in his state 28 years ago. He witnessed this as the husband of a Muslim American legal immigrant.
“I’ve been in Minnesota for a long time. My wife was born and raised there, from a family of immigrants who came from the Middle East, came to America, assimilated and not only assimilated, but it actually made me more patriotic,” Brewer said.
INSIDE ‘LITTLE MOGADISHU’: MINNESOTA’S SOMALI COMMUNITY UNDER A CLOUD OF FRAUD
“I saw Somalis coming there in droves. They had their own section of the city and they slowly started taking over the city of Minneapolis.”
The Somali population in Minneapolis and St. Paul grew significantly in the early to mid-1990s, driven by refugees fleeing Somalia’s civil war, with considerable numbers arriving after 1991 and continuing into the 2000s.
The collapse of Somalia’s government in 1991 sparked widespread conflict that forced millions of people to flee the country. At the time, Brewer was just a kid in Grapevine, Texas. When he transferred from SMU to the University of Minnesota, the Somali population was estimated at approximately 15,000 people, according to the Minnesota State Demographic Center.
When Brewer joined the Minnesota Vikings in 2002, at least 5,123 Minnesota students reported speaking Somali as their primary language at home, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Over the years, Brewer, as a sponsored professional athlete, says he did business with many of the local Somali immigrants who were getting rich. He began to witness its growing influence on local culture and religion.
“You turn on your TV. Have you ever seen a mayor on TV waving the flag of a foreign country and dancing and trying to mobilize people to support Somalia instead of supporting the United States? … When you walk around Minneapolis, you hear Islamic sirens going off because they’ve come here with that culture, trying to bring Islamic culture,” Brewer said.
“This is a spiritual battle like we haven’t seen in a long time.”
A recent investigation by activists Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo found that federal counterterrorism sources confirmed that millions in funds for the Minnesota Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program, Feeding Our Future and other state-sponsored organizations were sent to Somalia and that the terrorist group Al-Shabab may have obtained that cash.
Approximately 40% of households in Somalia receive remittances from abroad. Thorpe and Rufo reported that in 2023, the Somali diaspora sent $1.7 billion to the country, more than the Somali government’s budget that same year.
In the Land of 1,000 Lakes, political power and welfare funds came to the Somali population.
The state saw the rise of several prominent Somali politicians, including U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, state senators Omar Fateh and Zaynab Mohamed and St. Louis Park Mayor Nadia Mohamed, all Democrats.
“These people have embedded themselves in the political world, where they are now taking advantage of the federal government to finance their campaigns, send money overseas to Somalia and build luxury condos and create a lifestyle for people in Somalia at the expense of the American taxpayer,” Brewer said.
“For me, as a former Minnesota Viking, as a former Gopher, I got my bachelor’s degree and my master’s degree from the University of Minnesota. I was captain of both teams. It’s one of the most embarrassing moments I’ve ever had for a state that I’ve proudly said helped me grow from a boy into a man.”
Brewer, a business owner, added that he has moved many of his assets out of state in recent years.
“I withdrew a lot of my investment interests in the state and moved my business interests elsewhere because of what we’ve seen after George Floyd,” he said.
Somali residents previously told Pak Gazette Digital that they are angry that the entire community has been saddled with what they say is an unfair reputation, blaming a small minority of scammers and criminals for the negative attention directed at the entire group.
“Somalis in Minnesota are hard-working people. Many of them work two jobs, and yet about 75% remain poor,” Minnesota Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director Jaylani Hussein previously told Pak Gazette Digital.
“There are entrepreneurs, successful restaurants – people in trucking, IT, even corporate America – who are making significant changes. But those positive stories don’t get much attention.”
About 36% of Somali Minnesotans lived below the poverty line between 2019 and 2023, more than triple the U.S. poverty rate of 11.1%, according to Minnesota Compassa statewide data project. Somali-headed households reported a median income of about $43,600 during that period, well below the national average of $78,538.
Najma Mohammad, a hairstylist who came to the United States as a child, previously told Pak Gazette Digital: “Most people think that just because some people are bad and Somali, all Somalis are bad, which is just a stereotype.”
Brewer supports the state’s patriotic legal immigrant Muslim population, to whom he is personally connected through his wife’s family.
“By witnessing their family — the way they do business, the way they love this country, what they stand for, their patriotism — I learned from it. I’ve gotten better from it. I’ve loved my country more from witnessing my in-laws. So, I know what’s possible,” Brewer said.
“They did it by moving to Minneapolis and building their businesses. It can happen, and it does. That’s what this country was built on.”
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But he also wants President Trump to take drastic action in response to recent events.
“I would freeze all immigration until we have an idea of the depth of this fraud and the depth of corruption that has taken place.” Brewer said. “We need to get all these foreign terrorists out of our country. That should be a collective effort between our military, our local authorities, our communities, our leaders, our churches – everyone – to protect our land.”
