Reported from Oklahoma City -- The headquarters of Red Lake Nation's child-welfare agency sits on the shore of Lower Red Lake in northern Minnesota, a $15.5 million building the state helped pay for. On Sept. 10, witnesses watched FBI agents surround it and carry out boxes. Days later, the Bureau of Indian Affairs took over.
The Minnesota Star Tribune later reported that Cheri Goodwin, its executive director, had been fired. The matter has impacted the campaigns of candidates for governor, and the U.S. Senate.
Unsurprisingly, matters took on a deeply serious tone when the focus turned from "Democrats say and Republicans say" to undisputed deaths of children.
The child-care scandal has taken on significance beyond "fraud in Minnesota" to raise concerns about "fraud in (at least parts of) Indian Country."
The Michelle Tafoya campaign for U.S. Senate statement on fraud in Minnesota follows:
"The status quo politicians let criminals steal billions of dollars of Minnesota taxpayers’ hard-earned money. They let fraudsters rob us blind rather than ask basic questions that might have seemed politically incorrect. We need to clean up our state and lead the way toward a nationwide anti-fraud agenda.
"Any immigrant who is a guest in our country and gets convicted of fraud must be deported. As our Senator, Michele will cosponsor and lead the Deporting Fraudsters Act with Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and John Cornyn.
"Stop treating fraud as a second-class crime. As our Senator, Michele will fight for tough new mandatory minimum sentences that put fraudsters in federal prison and keep them there.
"Make state leaders do their job. As our Senator, Michele will push to strip federal funding from any state that refuses to implement anti-fraud controls or follow basic audit and recovery practices."
Nobody seriously disputes a tribe's right to run its own child welfare. Congress wrote the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978 because agencies had spent decades taking Indian children from their homes. Goodwin called her version of the work "the hard work of decolonization."
An Interior Department notice dated Sept. 9 describes a child flown out of Red Lake with a fractured skull and suspicious bruising. Agency staff didn't call police. They sent the child home.
The same child was airlifted again, this time with facial injuries, and when the FBI asked for another placement, the agency said no. Another house was in such condition that caseworkers wouldn't walk in. It took the FBI two months to get those children out.
The notice describes as many as eight child deaths since 2021 and, according to MPR News, blames the agency's inaction for five. It says the agency employed "a convicted sex offender and several convicted murderers and numerous convicted felons," and it names Goodwin among officials who "have consistently refused to engage with federal authorities."
The Star Tribune reported that investigators were told Goodwin overruled a directive to remove a child who later overdosed on fentanyl. A former employee told the paper Goodwin gave leadership jobs to her own children.
Goodwin's reports to the State Legislature told a happier story. She wrote that abuse reports fell by half in one year, from 641 to 313. The BIA calls the figures "unrealistic."
Hiring felons to work around children and handing leadership posts to relatives is what most people would call corruption, even if no prosecutor ever uses the word. No one has been charged, and Goodwin hasn't answered reporters' questions.
The tribe is appealing the takeover and says the notice has errors; the Star Tribune found that one child listed as dead may be alive. Even with that mistake fixed, the skull fracture and the felony records stay in the file.
Once upon a time -- actually several times at the Capitol in St. Paul, praise was handed out for the agency.
Gov. Tim Walz's Department of Human Services gave Goodwin's agency an excellence award in 2022. When Red Lake took child-protection cases from Beltrami County, the state agreed to keep Red Lake's figures out of its reports, leaving lawmakers with only the agency's account. It's a comfortable arrangement for whoever holds the pen.
The same state government missed Feeding Our Future. Prosecutors say it stole some $250 million meant to feed children. Nearly 80 people have been charged. The nonprofit sued regulators for discrimination, and the legislative auditor later named that lawsuit as one reason oversight failed.
Federal prosecutors estimate fraud across the state's social-service programs could reach $9 billion. Walz dropped his reelection bid. In March, a House Oversight Committee report accused him and Attorney General Keith Ellison of failing to act on fraud they knew about.
A Republican-led state House committee wants Congress to subpoena Rep. Ilhan Omar's office over its messages with the scheme's ringleader. Omar calls any claim she knew of the fraud “flat-out false.”
Feeding Our Future's lawyers accused state regulators of discrimination, and reimbursements kept coming for meals prosecutors say were never served. Goodwin never had to sue anyone. Red Lake's own report to lawmakers calls the reservation one of the poorest places in Minnesota, yet the officials who praised her agency had no way to check its good news and little appetite to try. Federal officials say children were dying all the while.
In the course of human and political events, the scandal has begun to impact the United States Senate race, hence intensifying of one of the remaining places where a Republican might a net gain for her party.
Minnesota GOP Senate candidate Michelle Tafoya has already made generic criticisms about tax-financed fraud a key element of her campaign (see above), in which she faces Democratic nominee Peggy Flanagan, Libertarian hopeful Rebecca Whiting (a Libertarian) and Marissa Simonetti, an unaffiliated candidate.
Because the U.S. Senate is in play and Tafoya is gaining support, with the race now considered (at best) lean Democratic rather solidly Democratic, interest increases.
The Washington Post has taken note.
Fox News is on the story.
CityNewsAmerica and its sister websites (CityNewsOKC and CityNewsTulsa) took a special interest in all this because corruption in Indian Country is of particular interest in the Sooner State.
Here scrutiny often falls on Big Tribes (consider the Cherokee Federal scrutiny), but small tribes are not exempt from the scrutiny.
And now, Donald J. Trump, the forty-seventh and forty-fifth president, has taken a keen interest in the Senate contest and in other Minnesota races.
Minnesota elects a new governor on Nov. 3 and also makes choices in several other races, including that Senate contest, the governor's race, and a few others.
The winners in next week's election should start by asking for Red Lake's full case data, the numbers the state agreed in 2021 to keep out of its reports.
Somebody in St. Paul should have asked five years ago.
By City News OKC - https://www.citynewsokc.com/opinion/feds-say-cheri-goodwin-s-decolonization-agency-got-kids-killed/article_6b9e3ac0-613a-4bdc-a89f-3e254967c8b0.html
