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Hope Walz, daughter of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), is under fire after posting a Christmas Day TikTok video wishing illegal immigrants “terrorized” by federal agents a Merry Christmas — as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted operations targeting Somali communities across the Twin Cities.
“I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to all,” Walz said in the clip. “Today, I’m holding our neighbors that ICE has been terrorizing near and dear to my heart and sending them all the love and light, as well as all the unhoused folks… just anybody that may be struggling right now I’m holding very close to me.”
The 20-something political activist concluded, “This year has been a tough one for all of us.”
Critics blasted the message as tone-deaf and emblematic of the governor’s permissive approach to illegal immigration. “Not a word about the victims of illegal alien crime,” one commentator wrote. “She’s defending lawbreakers while ignoring the Americans who’ve paid the price.”
ICE confirmed that agents carried out operations in Minnesota on Christmas Day as part of ongoing investigations into immigration fraud networks tied to Somali communities in the Minneapolis area — including Little Somalia, a heavily subsidized district that has become a focal point for both welfare fraud and terror finance probes.
The controversy surrounding Hope Walz’s comments comes amid a new wave of scrutiny over rampant daycare fraud under her father’s administration.
A viral video posted this week by independent journalist Nick Shirley showed the Quality Learning Center in Minneapolis — a child-care facility licensed for up to 99 children — appearing nearly empty. “There’s no one here,” Shirley says in the footage, panning across a deserted parking lot. Moments later, a woman inside the building can be heard yelling, “Don’t open up. It’s ICE!”
“Go away. You’re not welcome here. Shame on you,” the woman added, before retreating inside.
Shirley noted the center had received nearly $2 million in taxpayer funds and mocked the business for misspelling “learning” on its sign. “Are you in favor of $1.9 million going illegally or fraudulently to a daycare that can’t even spell its own name?” he asked viewers.
Federal and state records show the daycare has received at least $7.8 million in federal subsidies since 2019 despite accumulating 95 state violations, including missing child records, unsupervised hazards, and failures to maintain staffing logs.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) publicly blasted Governor Walz following the video’s release. “Four million dollars of hard-earned tax dollars going to an education center that can’t even spell ‘learning’ correctly,” Emmer said. “Care to explain this one, Tim Walz?”
The daycare’s apparent inactivity — coupled with widespread welfare fraud allegations tied to Minnesota’s Somali-run nonprofits — has renewed attention on what some lawmakers are calling the largest fraud scandal in state history, with estimates exceeding $9 billion in misused federal and state funds.
Investigators have alleged that some of the illicit money was funneled through fake daycare and meal service programs and eventually routed to terror-linked organizations, including Al-Shabaab, an Islamist militant group operating in East Africa.
Shirley, who has been independently investigating Minnesota’s welfare network, claimed that in a single day of fieldwork, his team documented over $110 million in suspicious operations across multiple “ghost facilities.”
