Not all of them. But enough to make a real problem.
Officials don’t want to call it what it is. So they rename it.
Oct 5, Edina City Hall. Bishop Harding Smith stood up and said: “This problem is not a Somali problem. This is a youth problem.”
That’s an insult.
Look at the reports. Nobody in them is a Japanese kid, a South Korean kid, or a Scandinavian kid. The police named who’s involved. They’re Somali.
THE SHOOTINGS
Four shootings in about two weeks. Edina, Eden Prairie, Bloomington. Suburbs, where you take your kids to football games and church.
- Sept 22, Edina: shots fired at teens playing basketball at Our Lady of Grace Church.
- Oct 2, Eden Prairie: gunfire at a homecoming game. Two Somali teens were shot and the stadium was evacuated.
- Oct 5, Eden Prairie: gunfire at a Speedway on W. 78th St.
- Oct 6, Bloomington: more than 100 rounds fired on Harriet Ave.
THE POLICE NAMED IT
Eden Prairie Chief Matt Sackett: “it is the Somali-American gang activity.”
Bloomington Chief Booker Hodges: the suspects and the victims are all Somali-American.
Sheriff Fletcher: “Somali on Somali.” He counts 14 homicides and more than 120 shooting incidents across the metro in the last year.
Three lawmen said Somali. One microphone said youth.
THEY ROBBED US, TOO
The kids pull the triggers. The adults ran off with the money.
Feeding Our Future: about $300 million stolen from a program meant to feed kids.* 80 people charged. 69 convicted.* They weren’t teenagers. Most were grown Somali-American men and women running fake nonprofits, restaurants and payrolls.*
Call either one a youth problem with a straight face.
YEARS IN, STILL ON THE DOLE
On top of the stealing, look at the welfare rolls.
Minnesota, Somali-headed households compared with native households (2014–2023):*
- 54% receive food stamps, compared with 7%.
- 73% have someone on Medicaid, compared with 18%.
- 81% use at least one welfare program, compared with 21%.
Read that first line again. Fifty-four against seven.
Too many came, stayed, and never stood on their own.
Assimilation isn’t a feeling. It shows up in a paycheck, a language, and a neighbor.
THE NUMBER NOBODY KEEPS
Minnesota stopped counting. After the Metro Gang Strike Force was shut down in 2009, the state gang database was cut back to almost nothing.
The last statewide count was in 2008. 2008. That was 18 years ago. It listed 2,438 confirmed gang members, 54% of them Black. None of those counts ever tracked Somali or any other national origin.
The 2017 audit of the state gang file listed just 47 people.
Nobody hid the number. They just stopped keeping it.
You can’t fix what you won’t name, and you can’t stop what you won’t count.
THE THREE A’S
- Accountability: The shooter owns every round. Leaders who rename the problem own the next shooting, and so do officials who won’t keep the count.
- Assimilation: A gang isn’t a culture. It turns its back on the country that opened the door.
- Allegiance: You defend your neighbors first. Not the gang. Not the excuse.
YOUR NEXT STEP
If your neighbors only heard “it’s a youth problem,” send them this. Read the rest of the series at thegratefulimmigrant.com, and follow @GratefulvsUngrateful so you’re not the last to see the next one.
Grateful, or Ungrateful?
Spine, not knees.
LIVE GRATEFUL.
*Welfare figures come from a Center for Immigration Studies analysis of 2014–2023 Census survey data. Households are counted by the head’s origin, so benefits for US-born children are included.
*Feeding Our Future: about $300 million per the Star Tribune (Aug 2026); the Justice Department’s original 2022 figure was $250 million. 80 charged and 69 convicted as of Aug 2026. Most defendants, but not all, are Somali-American. Founder Aimee Bock is not Somali; she was convicted in March 2025 and sentenced to 500 months (about 41 years) in May 2026, and is appealing.
Sources
- CIS: Somali Immigrants in Minnesota
- KSTP: Edina town hall
- KSTP: Police chiefs on Somali-American gangs
- Star Tribune: Law enforcement calls for crackdown
- FOX 9: Harriet Avenue shooting
- MPR: Calls for a regional gang task force
- Star Tribune: Feeding Our Future, 80th defendant
- DOJ: Feeding Our Future guilty pleas
- Minnesota 2008 gang report
- 2017 BCA gang file audit
