Homeland Security agents are in Minneapolis on Monday “conducting a massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said.
Two DHS officials tell CBS News that agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations branch are expected to inspect over 30 sites in the city on Monday alone.
HSI has historically investigated criminal activity with an international or immigration nexus, such as child exploitation, drug smuggling, identity theft and fraud. Under the second Trump administration, many HSI agents have been assigned to work alongside ICE’s immigration enforcement branch to find and arrest immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.
Asked whether this effort in Minneapolis is focused on the suspected fraud there or immigration enforcement, a senior DHS official said, a “little bit of everything.”
The HSI investigation comes a day after FBI Director Kash Patel called previous fraud arrests in Minnesota “just the tip of a very large iceberg.” He said that the agency has “surged personnel and investigative resources” to the state to investigate fraud.
Earlier this month, federal prosecutors said the total fraud in Minnesota’s Medicaid programs could be as much as $9 billion, a figure that Gov. Tim Walz and other state officials have disputed.
This summer, Walz agreed with a previous estimate from Thompson that fraud across all programs, including the Feeding Our Future scheme, which is not a DHS-administered program, could total $1 billion.
Thompson told reporters that there are federal investigations into all 14 of the Medicaid programs deemed “high risk” for fraud, which are also subject to a third-party payment audit.
More than 90 people have been accused, and in many cases convicted, of bilking hundreds of millions of dollars from the state, putting Walz’s administration in the hot seat and drawing attacks from President Trump.
This is a developing story.
Camilo Montoya-Galvez and
Joe Walsh
contributed to this report.
