Two powerful committee chairmen in Congress are moving quickly to investigate why Somali immigrant couriers were moving hundreds of millions of dollars out of U.S. airports in their luggage to overseas destinations the last few years, and whether there is any connection to a massive fraud scheme in Minnesota or terror groups in their native country in Africa. 

“We're going to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this […] and it will mean subpoenaing these things,” Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Just the News in an interview Thursday. He also revealed that federal agents are probing the massive cash transfers that move through a network centered in the Minneapolis airport.

“As we've started our investigation, we're already bumping up against the federal government, which says they have an active investigation,” Paul said during an interview with the Just the News, No Noise television show. “And whereas I can investigate for facts, I can't put people in jail. So if the FBI is currently investigating this, or certain members of the government are, it may be delayed, as far as me being able to bring individuals who may shortly be, you would think under indictment.”

House also targets Somali cash couriers

Paul’s promise for subpoenas in the Senate was matched across the Capitol by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., who said his investigation was also targeting the couriers inside Minnesota’s large Somali immigrant community. That community landed in the headlines after a massive taxpayer fraud scandal was revealed.

“We’ll get specific names, and they'll be receiving subpoenas as quick as we can get them out the door, because we are serious about this,” Comer told the same TV show. “This is a widespread professional organization.”

Nearly $700 million in cash shipped out from Minneapolis in 2024 and 2025

Both chairmen were reacting to reports in Just the News this month that the Transportation Security Agency had flagged nearly $700 million in cash carried in the luggage of a handful of Somali immigrants in 2024 and 2025 at the Minneapolis airport alone, much of it headed overseas to destinations like Amsterdam and Dubai.

Despite the red flags, the Biden administration chose not to investigate even though the cash movements out of Minneapolis were 99 times larger than those in major international airports like John F. Kennedy airport in New York City.

The TSA and federal investigators began investigating under President Donald Trump and have found other large Somali immigrant communities were also moving cash, like in Columbus, Ohio, where about $136 million left that airport in 2024 and 2025 headed for Minneapolis and then destined for foreign countries. 

U.S. officials have described the cash movements as a “foreign ATM” and said they are investigating the possibility some of the money is tied to defendants convicted of fleecing an estimated $9 billion in taxpayer funding to welfare programs in Minnesota under the tenure of Democrat Gov. Tim Walz, the unsuccessful Democrat nominee for vice president in 2024.

The House Committee on Oversight issued a report in which it said that "state lawmakers testified that Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison failed to take action to address this widespread fraud and have retaliated against whistleblowers who raised concerns."

For his part, Walz denied having ignored the problem, and told NBC News that he had in fact overseen prosecutions of fraudsters, and said that people should not “demonize” Minnesota’s Somali population.

Just the News first reported on the massive fraud scandal in his state just days after he was nominated as Kamala Harris' running mate in August 2024.

Emmer says at least $5 million went to Islamic terror groups

Majority Whip Tom Emmer, the No. 3 official in the U.S. House of Representatives and a Republican who represents Minnesota, told Just the News he’s concerned some of the money stolen from taxpayers made its way overseas to terror groups like Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda offshoot in northern Africa.

“They're trying to get as much money out of here as possible,” Emmer said of the Somali immigrants embroiled in the scandal. “And keep in mind the fact that a large part of it goes to Dubai and then gets laundered to other places. I would argue we're going to find out that it got laundered in many cases."

“At the end of the rope was Al-Shabaab in Somalia. Some of it went directly to Somalia. At least. I know of $5 million that has gone directly to Al-Shabaab in Somalia, from Minnesota. So it's amazing. Whole thing is a powder keg that has been allowed to exist for years by Democrats who benefit off of corruption,” he added.

The scandal has already cut short the political ambitions of Walz, who dropped his bid this month to run for re-election in 2026, a remarkable fall for a man who 18 months ago was the Democrats' choice to be one heartbeat away from the presidency.

"‘Oh, I have a million dollars in my suitcase"

Homeland Security officials said a few couriers, all U.S. citizens of Somali descent, were at the center of the currency movement operation. They routinely filed the necessary paperwork declaring the cash in their luggage, which some days totaled as high as $1 million.

Sen. Paul said a key question for investigators in Congress and the executive branch is how that much money gets turned into cash for each airport run, and what its final destination was. Another question, he said, was whether Democrats in the Biden administration and Minnesota turned a blind eye to such enormous cash movements.

“I don't understand how you can say, ‘Oh, I have a million dollars in my suitcase,’ and they just say ‘okay,’” he said. “And I think it's probably going to be very true that when you're moving a lot of cash, you can't just take it to your local bank, usually even in another country. So I imagine it's going to go through an illegal network. And not only is Al-Shabaab an illegal network, but a network that threatens Americans around the world.”