In another example of how culture matters, it’s not just the Somali community in Minnesota that has been involved in a massive welfare-related fraud scandal; it also appears that Somalis in Maine are guilty of similar welfare-related fraud schemes.

In Maine, the situation involves the deadly attack in October 2023 on a bowling alley in Lewiston, where 18 people were killed, and 13 were wounded. Two days after the atrocity, a nonprofit organization known as the Maine Community Foundation (MaineCF) set up two simultaneous running fundraisers, advertising that 100% of the donations collected would go to the victims and their families.

However, one of the fundraisers was the Lewiston-Auburn Area Broad Recovery & Organizations Fund, which did not direct funding to the victims or their families, but instead to local nonprofit organizations. According to MaineCF, donors could “direct their support” to either of the two fundraisers, yet MaineCF ultimately had the final say on where donations would be distributed.

Within two days, these fundraisers collected over $6 million in donations. Some $4.7 million went to the victims and families’ fundraiser, and $1.9 million went to the local nonprofit fundraiser.

While the $4.7 million did go to support victims and their families, none of the nearly $2 million raised in the second fundraiser went to those intended recipients. Instead, it was distributed among 29 local nonprofits, nine of which served immigrants and refugees, and seven of which were connected to the Somali community.

What do immigration and refugee organizations have to do with an attack on a bowling alley? Nothing. This was simply an opportunity to deceptively piggyback and fundraise off a tragedy.

One of the immigrant organizations that received $65,000 in donor support from these fundraisers was Gateway Community Services, a Somali-American nonprofit. Amy Sussman, whose nephew was killed in the attack, observed, “They raised money for nonprofits on the backs of 18 people who were murdered, 13 people who were shot, and 136 people who escaped their attempted murder. They used that to raise money for nonprofits.” Indeed.

Preying on people’s generosity after such an atrocity is bad enough, but it turns out that Gateway Community Services may be engaged in fraud as well. According to whistleblowers, Gateway Community Services over-billed the state’s Maine Care Services Program Integrity Unit by $904,000 from 2017 through 2018.

A whistleblower who worked for the state observed that this bilking by Gateway Community Services was also related to the COVID relief PPP loans. When asked if what he saw was fraud, he answered, “Absolutely. No doubt about it. … I started seeing $2,000 bonuses going to the staff that had only been with us for two weeks, never worked a shift with a client. And yet the PPP loans you’re giving $2,000 away like they’re lollipops.”

He claims he got fired for blowing the whistle on this fraud. His boss, Dr. Abdullahi Ali, happened to be a Somali immigrant. Ali responded to the allegations, stating, “I make no apologies for building a successful business in Maine, working hard to earn a living, earning my PhD, giving back to my Maine community, and running for office in Jubaland. I am proud to contribute my hard-earned $ to support my people back home.”

Jubaland is a region in southeastern Somalia. Dr. Ali’s comments demonstrate the problem. His loyalties lie with “his people back home.” It appears that he views the U.S. as simply a place to be, not as a place to embrace and make his permanent new homeland. It’s a place to be exploited for his own aims and ends back in Jubaland.

Americans are a generous people, but taking advantage of that generosity as gullibility is neither neighborly nor caring, nor is it acceptable in America. If this type of behavior is allowed to go unchecked and permitted by elected officials in order to uphold a bogus woke DEI narrative, then it will produce a growing anger and resentment against immigrants in the U.S.

The message must be clear and well-established: assimilation into the American culture for immigrants is not optional, but mandatory. Enough of this false narrative that expecting assimilation is somehow “racist” or “xenophobic.”