Federal immigration agents have begun moving into Minnesota neighborhoods tied to a sprawling web of taxpayer fraud, and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told Fox & Friends this week that the agency is coordinating closely with local law enforcement to shut these schemes down. Lyons made clear that ICE is using targeted operations — the kind of on-the-ground work Americans expect when criminal enterprises are bleeding public coffers — and that agents are trained to work with state and local partners to follow the money and make arrests.
What investigators have uncovered in Minnesota is not petty pocket change but industrial-scale theft from child nutrition, autism services, housing and other programs that were built to help the vulnerable. Prosecutors and reporters have laid out how groups like Feeding Our Future allegedly inflated meal counts and submitted fake bills that funneled millions out of federal programs, leading to a string of indictments and convictions and exposing massive holes in oversight.
This disaster was preventable. State agencies and local officials turned a blind eye while payments ballooned from reasonable levels to absurd sums, and auditors warned that weak controls and political fear of raising concerns created fertile ground for fraud. Minnesotans deserve answers about why basic verification systems failed while criminals siphoned off relief dollars, and the federal intervention now underway is the necessary cleanup the state should have done years ago.
Lyons didn’t mince words on Fox: ICE will protect its officers, will follow legal processes to remove lawbreakers, and will not be deterred by politicians who try to score cheap points by demonizing federal agents. He also explained why agents sometimes wear masks and tactical gear — because threats against officers and their families are real — and argued that law enforcement must be allowed to do its job without political grandstanding. Americans who pay the bills deserve enforcement, not virtue signaling.
This is not just enforcement theater; Treasury officials have also put investigators on the ground and are using FinCEN tools and geographic targeting orders to trace illicit transfers and hold money services businesses accountable. If dirty money was being shuttled through informal transfer networks or exported overseas, that trail will lead back to whoever stole from hard-working taxpayers, and the federal government now has the appetite and tools to follow it.
Conservatives have been warning for years that lax immigration policies and permissive local politics invite criminality, and Lyons’ tough talk about removing fraudulent entrants — including the sober discussion of Temporary Protected Status shifts — underscores that enforcement will be part of the solution. When legal status is abused to commit fraud, the consequence must be removal and prosecution; compassion for law-abiding immigrants does not include tolerating organized theft and rule-breaking.
Now is the time for governors and mayors who protected these schemes to stop playing politics and start cooperating. Let the FBI, DOJ, ICE, Treasury and local prosecutors do their work, and let justice fall where it should — on the fraudsters, enablers and any officials who looked the other way. Minnesota taxpayers deserve closure, restitution, and a return to law and order; every honest, hard-working American should demand nothing less.
