A Minnesota relief fund created for businesses affected by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown was shut down after officials encountered an overwhelming number of suspicious applications. Hennepin County received roughly 300 requests for money but cleared only 82 applicants, distributing approximately $500,000 from the $2 million authorized for the program. More than 200 applications were flagged for potential fraud before county officials stopped processing them.
The Hennepin County Board approved the fund for businesses claiming financial harm from Operation Metro Surge, the large-scale immigration enforcement operation launched in Minnesota in December 2025. The county includes Minneapolis and is the most populous county in the state. The money was supposed to provide emergency assistance to businesses that suffered losses during the federal enforcement campaign.
County reviewers instead found applications containing false or unverifiable information. Officials reported that some submissions appeared to contain AI-generated language that had been copied and pasted into applications for multiple businesses. Other applicants listed businesses that county employees could not find when they visited the reported locations, leaving officials unable to verify that the companies seeking taxpayer money existed.
As Fox News reported, the results continued to grow worse as employees kept reviewing the submissions. “Then at a certain point we’re like, ‘OK, we’re getting declining results on that,’” Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Lunde said. “And so we said it’s time to stop the program. So we just stopped processing at that point.”
The failed relief effort arrived as Minnesota was already dealing with the fallout from the Feeding Our Future scandal. Aimee Bock, the founder and executive director of the nonprofit, was sentenced in May 2026 to 500 months, or 41 years and eight months, in federal prison after a jury convicted her in the $250 million child-nutrition fraud case. More than 70 other people were charged in the sprawling federal prosecution, which involved fraudulent meal claims, shell companies, kickbacks, and the laundering of money intended to feed children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Minnesota’s fraud cases have extended well beyond Feeding Our Future. On the same day Bock was sentenced, federal authorities announced charges against another 15 people in Minnesota, Reuters reported. The defendants were accused of participating in Medicaid and other welfare-fraud schemes totaling $90 million.
Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor previously concluded that weak oversight by the state Department of Education created opportunities for the Feeding Our Future fraud to expand. According to the Associated Press report on the 2024 audit, the department failed to act on warning signs and didn’t use its authority effectively against the nonprofit. The audit said earlier and stronger intervention could have reduced the scale of the losses, while the department maintained that it had alerted federal authorities and later began implementing reforms.
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Lunde said the willingness of people to submit questionable claims after Minnesota’s other scandals showed that stronger deterrence was needed. “The fact that people, after all this fraud, felt that they could apply and get away with it, I think it’s a problem because clearly there’s no fear out there,” he said. “Until we get it where people fear things, then they’re gonna keep doing it.”