Right-Wing YouTuber Targets Somali Day Cares, Sparking Harassment Across Minnesota
A viral video by right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley has placed licensed Somali-owned day care centers in Minnesota under public scrutiny, triggering racial harassment, threats, and fear for children, families, and providers. Community leaders and officials say the video contains misleading claims and has caused real harm without evidence of wrongdoing.
A right-wing YouTuber went viral after allegedly confronting multiple Somali-owned day care centers in Minnesota over alleged fraud. The result: a bad-faith argument that is spotlighting active day care centers, causing many workers and children to be harassed and racially targeted.
Nick Shirley has a little over a million YouTube followers and frequently makes videos “investigating” recent news, largely skewing towards right-wing extremism. Last Saturday, he visited multiple daycares around Minneapolis to investigate fraud, claiming the businesses were just fronts.
The video went viral and has resulted in a surge of racial harassment towards the Black and Somali communities. However, many Minnesota residents and newsrooms pointed out that much of what he reported wasn’t accurate.
‘It’s kind of inciting fear where it need not be,” said Danielle Fisher, owner of ProVisionary Daycare in North Minneapolis. “I think that it’s making child care feel unsafe, especially for family child care providers who are providing that care in their own homes. A lot of African American family care providers do child care often in their own residence.”
The child care service industry in the Twin Cities is actually one of the most racially diverse, with data in 2023 showing Black jobholders as the second largest racial group at 7.4%.
“Maybe specifically Somali child care providers are being targeted now, but that doesn’t necessarily make us African Americans exempt from that,” said Fisher, who is African American. “It is affecting kids’ quality of life, families are not feeling safe and won’t drop their children off, so it also impacts the finances of child care providers.”
Shirley mentioned seven daycares he claimed were fraudulent; however, many had been open long before the Covid-19 pandemic, and all had active licenses except one. He was also shocked to find no kids in the buildings he visited and that he was not allowed to film inside, despite it being common practice for child care centers to prohibit filming of children.
One of the daycares featured, Quality Learning Center, has become the center of attention, with Shirley focusing on the misspelled sign and claimed it was closed, despite arriving before business hours, according to the daycare’s manager.
The daycare has been operating since 2017. People have come to the daycare attempting to film the building as children enter and are picked up, and yell across the street according to workers.
Before the current owners, the same location was the site of Salma Learning Center, which was shut down in 2015 for proven fraud. However, Shirley bases his allegations of fraud on this case, even though the investigation closed a decade ago and involved different owners who have already been prosecuted.
“Nick Shirley’s video isn’t gonna be the thing that makes us take any sort of actions because we rely on investigations done by law enforcement,” Hennepin County Attorney’s Office Public Information Officer Daniel Borgertpoepping said. While he couldn’t confirm, he said it is “unlikely” the office will open cases against the daycares mentioned.
Fardowsa Ali has run the daycare for over a decade and has seen dozens of children grow up. She also owns a cafe called Albi’s Kitchen, which opened five months ago, renting space in the building that used to be the Quality Learning Center. According to Ali, since the video, both she and her staff have received dozens of calls and voicemails harassing and threatening them.
“It’s gotten really bad,” said Fatima, who works the front desk at Hooyo. The daycare, which is open every weekday from 6:30 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., has received dozens of racist calls and voicemails. “It’s been ringing all day. Everything bad you can imagine. [Shirley] can go and say this is a problem, but don’t say it’s just Somalis. I’m not Somali, and I think this is bad.”
Ali reported a call she received on Monday to the police after an individual threatened her and her staff, saying he would break down the door to the center and attack its employees. Then on Tuesday, Shirley arrived at the Quality Learning Center again with his cameraman, sporting “1-800 fraud” sweatshirts, leading Ali to believe they had only made this video for profit.
“I believe these people got paid,” Ali said. “[The government] is supposed to do its job a long time ago. Whoever is not cooperating they’re supposed to close. So, if the government is not doing their job, why are they listening to YouTubers?”
In the aftermath of Shirley’s video, the Trump administration announced it would freeze all child care payments to Minnesota, hurting many well-meaning businesses like Ali’s. “I’m scared. Some of the staff have been here nine years,” Ali said. “If they’re not paying us, how are we going to survive? I don’t know how I am going to pay my staff.”
Izzy Canizares is a freelance journalist and contributor to the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder