Foreign ATM? Somali cash exodus from Minneapolis exponentially larger than other major US airports

The cash moved overseas in luggage by Somali couriers from the Minneapolis airport was 10 to 100 times larger than the total foreign exodus of money at other larger American airports the last two years, officials tell Just the News.Homeland Security Department officials said the statistics they have gathered in recent weeks show the movement of cash out of Minnesota was substantially abnormal and should have raised red flags during the Biden administration, long before the Trump administration began investigating it as part of a major fraud scheme that stole billions from taxpayers in the state. 
Just the News reported Tuesday that the Transportation Security Administration detected and flagged nearly $700 million in cash moved in luggage out of the Minneapolis airport by Somali couriers in 2024 and 2025 alone, a stunning total that averaged nearly $1 million a day.
Some of the cash moved to Amsterdam and then to Dubai, a route that has garnered concern in recent days by intelligence agencies and federal criminal investigators, officials said.
“It was like a cash ATM draining American dollars and moving them overseas, and nobody in the Biden administration seemed to think anything of it,” one official with direct knowledge told Just the News, speaking on condition of anonymity. “These couriers were openly flaunting what they’ve doing by legally declaring the cash they were taking out.”
Minneapolis travelers alone had $342.37 million in their luggage in 2024 and $349.4 million in 2025, and the totals nationwide are likely to be much higher, the officials told Just the News.
The flow of the Somali couriers’ cash out of Minneapolis was 99 percent larger than the foreign cash detected or declared in 2025 moving in luggage from the airports in Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta or John F. Kennedy International in New York City, the officials said. And it was 90% larger than the amounts that left Seattle, a major hub for Asian travelers.
Similarly, in 2024, the total currency discovered over $10,000 traveling internationally out of Atlanta and JFK was less than 1% of the currency discovered at Minneapolis. And the total in Dallas-Fort Worth in 2024 was 3% of the Minneapolis sums, while Seattle was just 6%, officials said.
Though all were legally declared according to U.S. Customs rules, the bundles of cash in luggage in Minneapolis – some as much as $1 million in a single trip – raised regular suspicions among TSA agents.
The mountain of dollars leaving the country is now being investigated by the Homeland Security Investigations unit as part of a broader probe into a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme centered around the state’s Somali immigrant community, where dozens have been charged with or convicted of federal crimes.
Rep. Jeff Crank, R-Colo., told the Just the News, No Noise television show on Tuesday night that he believes the current Minnesota fraud scandal will embolden Congress to make changes to the law to give federal authorities more power to investigate the exodus of U.S. money to foreign countries, especially from illegal aliens.
“We have to do it. It’s embarrassing that Congress hasn’t done this before,” Crank said. “These are financial controls that any company would have on corporate money. Any good company would have it. The board of directors would fire them if they didn’t. I don’t know why in the world we wouldn’t have those kinds of controls.”

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