A headscarf-wearing woman scolded a journalist for asking her if she is running a daycare out her Washington home amid a national spotlight on Somali owned fraud schemes.
Daycare centers are under intense scrutiny across the country after a massive Somali fraud scandal in Minnesota was unveiled.
After independent journalist Nick Shirley shared footage of an apparently empty Minneapolis daycare with a misspelled name sign, the federal government froze all child care payments to the state on Tuesday.
The FBI is also investigating the fraud, and Director Kash Patel said he believes Minnesota is ‘just the tip of a very large iceberg.’
In Washington, local independent journalists have turned their attention to Somali-run daycares in their state.
On Tuesday, an unidentified headscarf-wearing woman, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, was seen wagging her finger at Discovery Institute Senior Journalism Fellow Jonathan Choe outside of her Seattle home.
‘Is this an actual daycare? Are you aware of the Somali daycare fraud going on? We’re just trying to check out if this is a real daycare,’ Choe asked.
‘I am working. You don’t have to come to my home,’ the woman said.
‘Where are all the children? If you have a daycare, where are all the children?’ the journalist asked.
‘I don’t have to… I don’t have to tell you what I have or what I don’t have,’ she said.
Notably, the Seattle Public School system is on winter break from December 22 to January 2, and it is unclear if children would be attending daycare when the interaction occurred.
When Choe asked if she could prove the daycare was legitimate, she replied, ‘I am not proving anything for you,’ while wagging her finger.
Later that day, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown posted on social media that his office had received an influx of complaints from Somali community members about being harassed.
‘My office has received outreach from members of the Somali community after reports of home-based daycare providers being harassed and accused of fraud with little to no fact-checking,’ Brown wrote.
‘Showing up on someone’s porch, threatening, or harassing them isn’t an investigation. Neither is filming minors who may be in the home. This is unsafe and potentially dangerous behavior.
‘I encourage anyone experiencing threats or harassment to either contact local law enforcement or our office’s Hate Crimes & Bias Incident Hotline.’
According to a 2024 report from the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), 283 of the state’s 5,779 daycare providers list Somali as their primary language.
Washington’s Democratic Governor Bob Ferguson told KOMO that he was not aware of any fraud schemes in the state.
‘I think we can all agree that if someone is violating the law in Minnesota or any state, you need to be held accountable. If there is fraud, you need to be held accountable, I don’t care who you are,’ Ferguson said.
He added that he stands with the Somali community and has received reports of Somalis feeling unsafe amid the national spotlight.
‘That community is scared; their kids are scared as well. And so, I was there to express my support for them during a challenging time, but obviously, whether it’s in any work we do as a state, if anyone is violating the law, of course, we take action on that,’ Ferguson said.
Jim Walsh, Chair of the Washington State Republican Party, told the local news outlet he welcomes federal accountability.
‘We don’t know that with certainty, and we do need to be careful. It may be that some or a lot of this money is being spent properly,’ Walsh said.
‘But the emerging evidence is that a number of these childcare centers look like they’re empty, and they’ve been empty for a while.
‘This is not singling out any racial or ethnic group. This is about state government projects, programs that are using taxpayer dollars, and would we want to make sure that the dollars are being spent correctly?’
The Daily Mail contacted DCYF for comment.
