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Former Minnesota Viking and University of Minnesota football player Jack Brewer said he has seen high-end business involving Minnesota’s “elite” Somali population up close. In the process, he experienced 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 because I’ve done business with them and I’ve been endorsed by them as an athlete,” Brewer told Pakinomist Digital.
“Now you go in there and some of their main customers are these Somali scammers who buy high-end cars in a state that gets four months of sunlight and decent weather. They drive around in sports cars that you would see in Beverly Hills or South Beach Miami, all off the backs 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 following revelations that potentially billions in taxpayer dollars were fraudulently distributed through members of the state’s Somali population.
Brewer remembers the moment he began to see that reality take shape, when the Somali population suddenly began to boom across his state 28 years ago. He witnessed this as the husband of a Muslim American legal immigrant.
“I’ve been in Minnesota 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 just assimilated, but actually made me more patriotic,” Brewer said.
INSIDE ‘LITTLE MOGADISHU’: MINNESOTA’S BEIGGED SOMALI COMMUNITY UNDER A CLOUD OF FRAUD
“I saw Somalis coming there in droves. They had their own part of the city and slowly started to take over the city of Minneapolis.”
The Somali population in Minneapolis and St. Paul grew significantly from the early to mid-1990s, fueled by refugees fleeing Somalia’s civil war, with significant numbers arriving after 1991 and continuing through the 2000s.
The collapse of Somalia’s government in 1991 led to widespread conflict that forced millions to flee the country. At the time, Brewer was just a kid in Grapevine, Texas. When he moved 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 pro athlete with endorsements, witnessed transactions involving local Somali immigrants attaining wealth. He began to see their growing influence on local culture and religion.
“You turn on your TV. Have you ever seen a mayor on TV waving a foreign country’s flag and dancing and trying to rally people to support Somalia over supporting America? … When you walk through Minneapolis, you hear Islamic sirens going off because they’ve come in here with that culture and are trying to bring in Islamic culture,” Brewer said.
“This is a spiritual battle the likes of which we have not seen in a long time.”
A recent investigation by activists Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo found that federal counterterrorism sources confirmed millions in funding for Minnesota’s 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 received 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, which was higher than the Somali government’s budget in the same year.
In the land of 1,000 lakes, political power and welfare funds found their way to the Somali population.
The state saw the rise of several prominent Somali politicians, including US 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 exploiting the federal government to finance their campaigns, to send money abroad to Somalia and to build luxury apartments and create a lifestyle for people in Somalia off the backs of the American taxpayer,” Brewer said.
“For me, as a former Minnesota Viking, as a former Gopher, I got my bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Minnesota. I was the captain of both of those teams. It’s one of the most embarrassing times I’ve ever had for a state that I’m proud to say helped make me from a boy to a man.”
Brewer, a business owner, added that he has moved many of his assets out of state in recent years.
“I’ve pulled back a lot of my investment interests in the state and moved business interests elsewhere because of what we’ve seen after George Floyd,” he said.
Somali residents have previously told Pakinomist Digital 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 the entire group receives.
“Somalis in Minnesota are hardworking people. Many of them work two jobs, and yet about 75% are still poor,” Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Minnesota Executive Director Jaylani Hussein previously told Pakinomist Digital.
“There are entrepreneurs, successful restaurants – people in trucking, IT and even companies in the US – making significant changes. But the positive stories don’t get much attention.”
About 36% of Somali Minnesotans lived below the poverty line from 2019 to 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 median of $78,538.
Najma Mohammad, a hair stylist who came to the United States as a child, previously told Pakinomist Digital: “Most people think just because some people are bad and Somalis that every Somali is bad, which is just a stereotype.”
Brewer is behind the state’s patriotic Muslim legal immigrant population, to which he is personally connected through his wife’s family.
“Witnessing their family — the way they do business, the way they love this country, what they stand for, their patriotism — I’ve learned from it. It’s made me better. I’ve loved my country more from witnessing my in-laws. So I know what’s possible,” Brewer said.
“They did that by moving to Minneapolis and building their businesses. It can happen and it does happen. That’s what this country was built on.”
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But he also wants to see President Trump take drastic measures in response to recent developments.
“I would put a freeze on all immigration until we get to grips with the depth of this fraud and the depth of the corruption that has taken place.” Brewer said. “We need to get all these foreign terrorists out of our country. It should be a collective effort between our armed forces, our local law enforcement, our communities, our leaders, our churches — all of them — to protect our country.”
