Nairobi, Kenya, December 2011:
I’m in Kenya researching my seventh John Wells novel, ‘The Night Ranger’. Wells pursues American missionaries brought into the bush by Somali mercenaries. It’s a change of pace for him, where the stakes are lower than in his usual work. It will turn out to be one of my favorite novels.
I visited a large Somali refugee camp in northern Kenya and on the Indian Ocean coast, where Somali kidnappers recently captured and murdered several Europeans.
Now I’m back in Nairobi talking about the problem of Somalia, which Kenyans face first hand. Kenya is predominantly Christian. Somalis are Muslim – and poor, even by African standards. Kenya needs western safari tourism for jobs and money. The kidnappings didn’t help. Kenyans prefer to keep their neighbors outside. But the United Nations and international aid agencies have given them little choice (oh, the irony: poor countries hate open borders even more than rich ones).
DHS REVIEWS CITIZENSHIP CASES FROM SOMALIA AND OTHER COUNTRIES AT HIGH RISK FOR POSSIBLE FRAUD
Anyway, I have a drink in a hotel and talk about Somalia with (white) non-governmental aid workers – they live well, these NGO types. And someone says:
‘Here’s what you need to know about Somalia. It’s on the ocean, right? [Somalia has the longest coastline in Africa, almost 2,000 miles.] But most Somalis cannot swim, cannot fish and have no interest in the water. That’s how inward-looking they are, how tribal.”
The words stuck with me. And fourteen years later, they help explain Minnesota’s multibillion-dollar Somali corruption scandal, which became one of the biggest stories of 2025.
BESSENT INCREASES EXTENSIVE FRAUD PROGRAMS IN MINNESOTA AS TREASURE STAFF ARE TAKEN TO THE SITE
The Somalis are tribes, but they are not alone.
It is impossible to understand the vast swath of the world that stretches from Morocco, 6,000 kilometers east to Pakistan and south through Africa, without realizing the importance of tribes. This area includes almost two billion people, mainly Muslims, but also includes hundreds of millions of Christians. It is largely poor, but there are also rich Arab Gulf states.
What it shares more than anything else is the commitment to the tribe as the center of identity. In Arab and Muslim countries, marriage between cousins helps maintain tribal identity; Marriages between cousins account for about two-thirds of all marriages in Pakistan and almost as many in some Arab countries.
LOEFFLER: LARGE NETWORK OF SOMALIAN NON-PROFITS PRESSED FROM MINNESOTA’S WELFARE STATE
In Somalia, the figures are slightly lower, because marriages help to bind ‘clans’ – and not just closely related families – together.
Yet a book on marriage in Arab and African countries explains:
“Generally speaking, during the marriage process in Somalia and Djibouti, collective interests are considered more important than the interests of the two individuals getting married.”
SOMALIA MINNESOTANS ARE BEING ‘SIN GOOD’ IN FRAUD INVESTIGATION, NYT WRITER CLAIMS
I don’t think most Americans can easily understand how alien these cultures really are to our way of thinking.
A society that does not even allow its members to choose their husband or wife has a very different structure than Western societies that focus on individual rights – and the rule of law.
Yes, in both the West and tribal societies, the family is the core unit, which may be why Westerners have not seen this difference as clearly as they should.
ALEX BERENSON: MINNESOTA WAS JUST THE BEGINNING: NEW YORK’S MEDICAID GRIFT IS MUCH WORSE
But in the West every family is effectively independent. More powerful groups are political, not familial, organized by population size and geography – cities, provinces, states, nations.
In tribal societies, families stack up to gain power, which is why cousin marriage is so important. Me to my cousin; me and my cousin against our second cousin neighbors; our extended family against yours – all led by a clan leader. The clans can share territory, but not political leadership.
In the West, nation states gain legitimacy by – at least in theory – providing all citizens with equal justice under the law.
MAJOR MEDICAID FRAUD SYSTEMS ARE ATRISING MINNESOTA’S FEDERAL FUNDING – AND THE FALLOUT COULD INCREASE
Tribal societies do not have a similar overarching philosophical foundation. In practice, they operate as tribes compete and cooperate, sometimes in relatively calm equilibrium, sometimes under the autocratic leadership of the strongest tribe and its leaders.
And sometimes in open conflict, up to and including civil war – such as in the wars that have ravaged Somalia for decades.
When individual families from tribal societies come to Western countries, they have little choice but to adopt Western accumulation mechanisms – to accept the rule of law and the authority of independent political jurisdictions. That is exactly what many individual Somalis have done.
LIZ PEEK: THE MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL Exposes Democrats’ Indifference To The Needy
But if they come en masse, like the Somali immigrants from Minnesota, they may try to keep their tribal structures at least partially intact.
In November, the independent newspaper County Highway published an extraordinary piece on the Somali fraud in Minnesota, explaining how easily the community had rebuilt itself along clan lines:
“The community is not the result of a voluntary movement of ambitious people seeking a new life in America, but of the mass resettlement of entire families by the US government…
“The Somalis brought the language, culture and complex clan system of their shattered homeland to Minnesota… the cultural forces that allowed Somalis to resume a version of their previous lives also had the effect of shielding themselves from other Minnesotans.”
IT’S NOT JUST MINNESOTA. Democrats have created welfare fraud everywhere
“The historical Somali society is a kind of Janus society,” explains Ahmed Samatar, a political scientist at Macalester College in Saint Paul and founder and editor-in-chief of Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, speaking from his skylight office on campus.
“On the one hand, there is the intimacy of the local community, the family subgroup and kin group. Here there is reciprocity, responsibility and respect… But civic culture was not part of that tradition.”
MEDIA ‘COMPLICITY’ IS ACCUSED AS FEDS SAYS MINNESOTA FRAUD CRISIS COULD REACH $9 BILLION: ‘THEIR TRUE COLORS SHOWN’
In other words, many Somalis believe they owe their tribes hard work, integrity and honesty.
Their tribes – and no one else.
So when Democrats in Minnesota decided to drop all barriers and effectively open federally funded programs to mass looting — a decision that was both openly cynical and strangely naive — a staggering number of Somalis benefited.
Pressure is mounting in the Senate as the Minnesota fraud scandal continues to unfold
As County Highway explained:
“The fraud spread so widely and quickly that it seemed as if there was no real architect… galloping[ing] through the Somali community, which hid the secret from non-Somali Minnesota with ironclad discipline. The clan system served as both a path and protection for the fraud…”
In each fraud case, the Somali community demonstrated what Professor Samatar described as ‘the solidarity of thieves’. Bad actors within the community would approach potential co-conspirators without any fear of betrayal.
MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL WAS ‘SHOCKING EASY’ TO EXECUTE, IS PROBABLY WORSE THAN REPORTED: EX Prosecutor
Honor among thieves!
No, not every Somali in Minnesota can or should be blamed for this fraud.
But that does not mean that the decision to accept large numbers of immigrants en masse from a tribal society has not paved the way for this.
MINNESOTA’S SOMALI FRAUD SCANDAL exposes the hidden costs of immigration
Europe has seen a similar crisis with Syrian and Afghan refugees over the past decade, although Europe has seen more violence as it has taken in so many young, single men.
In 2025, it became clear that the post-1965 wave of immigration to the United States is now over.
President Donald Trump has proven that the Democratic argument that the United States could not maintain its borders was a lie. He has proven that with reasonable and politically acceptable steps, new illegal immigration can be virtually reduced to zero.
Whistleblower warns massive fraud is taking place in Ohio, Minnesota’s Somali community ‘just a tip of the spear’
I doubt that any serious Democratic Party candidate for at least a few presidential cycles will call for allowing mass waves of unskilled migrants (either illegally or through dubious programs like the ones the Biden administration has devised).
But at some point – perhaps a decade from now, perhaps a generation from now – the pendulum will swing again and the United States will be willing to accept large numbers of new developments. immigrants again.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS ADVICE
If that happens, I hope it will remember the lessons of the past decade — and not let in large groups from tribal societies, encouraging them to recreate their clans en masse on American soil.
We cannot be sure that all our new immigrants will accept the ideal of America.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
But we can do our best to make sure they don’t arrive with fragmented loyalties.
Editor’s note: This column first appeared on Author’s Substack, “Unreported truths.”
CLICK HERE TO ALEX BERENSON
