Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) congressional office is housed inside a Somali community center to which she redirected campaign funds that came from fraudsters now convicted in the Feeding Our Future case.
Omar’s office in Minneapolis is currently co-located within the Sabathani Community Center, a black-led nonprofit organization that provides “culturally tailored services.” In 2022, “out of an abundance of caution,” Omar donated a total of $5,400 divided among three Minneapolis food pantries — including Sabathani, which runs a food distribution center — after the congresswoman received campaign contributions matching that amount one year prior from a pair of Feeding Our Future operatives.
Those two Omar donors, Ahmed Abdullahi Ghedi and Abdihakim Ali Ahmed, later pled guilty to wire fraud and money laundering in the largest pandemic-era scheme in U.S. history, known as Feeding Our Future, an organization that sponsored dozens of purported food distributors across Minnesota, many of them shell companies created by Somali immigrants, that fraudulently billed a federal child nutrition program for the cost of meals never actually served.
Ghedi and Amed, alongside other co-conspirators, operated a fake meal-delivery site out of a Somali deli under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future. Together, they stole $7.2 million in child nutrition money meant to feed underprivileged children based on bogus reimbursement claims submitted between September 2020 and September 2021.
SOMALI FUGITIVE FLEEING MINNESOTA FRAUD CHARGES IS AN ILHAN OMAR DONOR
During that time, Ghedi and Amed donated $2,700 each to Omar’s reelection campaign in February and March 2021, respectively. Omar then passed along their payments in 2022 to Sabathani and two other minority-owned food shelves after Ghedi and Amed were named as suspects in the Feeding Our Future fraud ring.
“She did donate the money, but she had taken their money when they were actively involved in the scheme,” Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins said in an interview with the Washington Examiner, adding, “as did [Minnesota Attorney General] Keith Ellison.”
Robbins, the Republican chairwoman of the state’s House fraud prevention and oversight committee, has spearheaded an investigation into Omar’s involvement in the Feeding Our Future scandal.
Omar introduced the bill, the Maintaining Essential Access to Lunch for Students Act, that drastically relaxed eligibility requirements for food distributors to be able to receive reimbursements during the COVID-19 school shutdowns. By granting waivers that allowed nonschool-based caterers to claim compensation, Omar’s MEALS Act is believed to have incentivized the Feeding Our Future fraud network to enroll phantom entities as food distribution sites in the after-school meal delivery program. Many of the Somali suspects implicated in the scheme were constituents in Omar’s congressional district.
Omar has refused to hand over records of her office’s past correspondence with Feeding Our Future’s convicted ringleader, Aimee Bock, in 2021, when Bock’s fraud ring was actively defrauding the federal government. Court documents citing the 2021 communications between Bock and congressional staffers in Omar’s office were entered as government exhibits in the fraud kingpin’s federal trial. The entries mentioned multiple texts and emails, including an email exchange requesting “Help with USDA Food Program.”
The congresswoman, a Somali refugee herself, directly promoted the MEALS Act to her Somali constituents. In 2020, she filmed a promotional video, broadcast on Somali TV of Minnesota, at Safari Restaurant, whose owner, Salim Said, was a high-ranking Feeding Our Future associate jointly tried with Bock years later. The clip showed Omar touting the MEALS Act’s passage while highlighting Safari Restaurant as a site where such subsidized meals were available.
Safari Restaurant, the top meal-site sponsor in Feeding Our Future’s nexus, was a frequent venue and caterer for the congresswoman’s campaign events, both during Omar’s statehouse days and her congressional run. Omar held her 2018 election party at Safari Restaurant when she first ran for Congress and continued to use Safari Restaurant as an event space and catering services, charging the site 12 times over a two-year period. From 2018 to 2020, she spent almost $10,000 at the locale on food, drinks, and rental fees.
As for Omar’s relationship with the Sabathani Community Center, however, Robbins noted that candidates who have received contributions from controversial figures will often forward those donations on to local charities, rather than keep the cash themselves or refund it to the disreputable donors.
“That’s what politicians tend to do: They give it to nonprofits in their community when there’s a problem with a donation,” Robbins told the Washington Examiner. “You wouldn’t want them to give it back to the fraudsters.”
Omar has paid Sabathani more than $46,700 in monthly facility rental fees since she moved her district office into the community center in 2023, according to the congresswoman’s campaign finance disclosures.
“I’m not surprised that she has her office there because it’s a place where her office would get a lot of community engagement,” Robbins said.
The center has advertised that Omar’s office can help constituents claim Medicare and Medicaid benefits as well as assist with “immigration case inquiries.”
HOW MINNESOTA’S SOMALI FRAUD INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX HAS STOLEN MILLIONS FROM MEDICAID
Two months after Omar moved in, Sabathani spotlighted a resource fair held on site by her district office to help residents “navigate issues with federal agencies.”
Aside from Omar’s congressional and campaign offices, the 188,000-square-foot community center contains more than 30 other businesses in its building. According to Sabathani’s “building partner directory,” the center also houses two home healthcare agencies, an occupational therapist specializing in “racial identity,” a somatic counselor helping clients “heal from white supremacy,” a psychotherapy practice working with “marginalized” individuals who are experiencing “community trauma,” and a daycare on the lower level that accepts subsidies through the state’s fraud-fraught Child Care Assistance Program.
The Sabathani Community Center has served as a meeting place for members of the Somali community to discuss issues specific to Minnesota’s Somali diaspora.
In 2015, federal investigators and Somali leaders met at Sabathani to workshop ways to cut off terrorism-recruitment ties in the city’s close-knit Somali community. The town hall aimed to disrupt jihadi enlistment efforts among the area’s Somali population, as a flow of young recruits continued to leave the Twin Cities to join groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and Al-Shabaab, al Qaeda’s offshoot in Somalia. A congressional report found at the time that Minnesota, which is home to the country’s highest concentration of Somalis, provided the most aspiring fighters for ISIL or al Qaeda affiliates of any U.S. state.
The Sabathani Community Center has never been accused of criminal wrongdoing or flagged by authorities in connection with the Feeding Our Future case.
Omar’s office and Sabathani did not respond to requests for comment.