Somali child care providers report vandalism, threats after viral fraud video

When manager Nasrulah Mohamed got to Nokomis Day Care Center at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, he saw destruction.

Mohamed says security footage shows that between 3 and 6 a.m. Tuesday, someone broke through a brick wall in the back of the center. Nokomis Center administrators say the suspects crawled through the hole they made and broke open office doors. Mohamed said documents including enrollment records, employee information and financial documents were gone. The Minneapolis Police Department confirmed to MPR News they responded to reports of a break-in at the address.

“This is devastating news, and we don’t know why this is targeting our Somali community as one video made by a specific individual made this all happen,” Mohamed said.

Mohamed is referring to a video posted last Friday by right-wing content creator Nick Shirley. Shirley visited a number of day care facilities and other businesses in an attempt to expose fraud in Minnesota. The majority of the centers featured were Somali-owned. The video went viral, which resulted in calls for investigations by the state and an onslaught of racist rhetoric towards the Somali community. In addition to the break-in at Nokomis Center, other Somali child care providers say they have been receiving harassing phone calls.

“We’ve been receiving hateful messages through our voicemail threatening us since the past couple of days, including one that happened yesterday morning, after the break-in. This is frightening and exhausting,” Mohamed said at a news conference Wednesday.

Families who rely on the day care facilities were also on edge.

“My kids see what’s on the news, and they are reading and they are asking me, ‘What can we do now that they know our information and our home addresses?’” said parent Sacdiya Aden, translated by Amina Adin.

This is also impacting parents’ ability to work. Adin said her kids are too scared to go to child care, but she has to work and doesn’t know what to do.

Political pawns

Some providers told MPR News they feel like the Somali community is being used as political pawns. When Shirley filmed his video, many Somali providers were already on edge from ICE operations targeting their community and comments from President Trump referring to the community as “garbage.” So when Shirley showed up at the door of various daycare facilities, the providers were understandably hesitant to allow a stranger inside their doors.

“As we approached the door, we saw camera, three men, and we were like, ‘Okay, this is not going great,’ because we did not expect Shirley to show up. But we worry about ICE, and we did not open our door because we thought it was ICE the first time,” said Umi Hassan, an owner of ABC Learning Center, which was featured in the viral video.

Source: NPR