JUST IN: Feds Catch Red State Somalis Smuggling $130M To Minnesota

Federal agents probing a Somali immigrant cash-courier operation that funneled massive sums through Minneapolis have uncovered a new stop along the route: Columbus, Ohio.

Homeland Security Department officials told Just the News that Transportation Security Administration officers have tracked and flagged about $136 million in bulk cash packed into outbound luggage at passenger checkpoints at John Glenn Columbus International Airport since November 2023.

Officials said the cash was carried by U.S. citizens of Somali origin flying out of Columbus en route to Minneapolis or Atlanta. The couriers declared the money as required on federal forms.

“Typically, when they go to Minneapolis, they drop off the cash and then a subsequent courier travels abroad from Minneapolis to Dubai through Amsterdam,” one official familiar with the investigation told Just the News on Tuesday, speaking only on condition of anonymity.

Investigators believe they have uncovered a sprawling cash-movement network pulling money from Somali immigrant communities across the West, Midwest and South, then consolidating it in Minneapolis before sending it overseas.

Somali women in the country’s capital, Mogadishu, on June 5. AMISOM Photo / Tobin Jones.

Just the News reported exclusively last week that TSA agents detected nearly $700 million in cash in luggage leaving Minneapolis-area airports in 2024 and 2025, often bound for Amsterdam and then Dubai, where U.S. officials lost visibility. TSA routinely flagged the movements during the Biden administration, but officials said there was little appetite to dig deeper until President Donald Trump took office last year.

Officials said the amounts moved out of Minnesota’s largest airports by Somali immigrant couriers were 90 to 99 times greater than totals seen at major international hubs such as John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, Seattle, or Atlanta.

As agents traced the money backward along its path, they identified the Columbus operation, officials said.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has seized on the reporting. He told podcaster Joe Rogan this week that he is launching an investigation into whether the cash exports are tied to fraud.

“The Somalis were so good at it that they were sending hundreds of millions of dollars back overseas,” Paul told Rogan in a podcast that aired Tuesday. “So I think we are at the tip of the iceberg.”

“You have to check off a box when it goes through the airport, and they weren’t even hiding that they were sending it back. So the poor Somalis sent like $700 million over the last couple of years,” he added.

The revelations come as federal prosecutors in Minnesota investigate a sweeping fraud scheme that authorities estimate siphoned off as much as $9 billion in welfare funds, much of it tied to Somali immigrants in the Minneapolis area.

The scandal derailed Gov. Tim Walz’s political future, forcing the Minnesota Democrat to drop plans to seek re-election in 2026. It also prompted President Donald Trump to end special immigration status for Somalians seeking refuge in the U.S. and spurred a major House Oversight Committee probe that brought hundreds of FBI and Homeland Security agents into the case.

Prosecutors have indicted more than 90 defendants, most of them of Somali descent. About half have already been convicted, officials said.

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