‘I noticed some things that didn’t make sense’: National Review reporter details local Somali-run daycare probe

Somali-run daycare centers in Minneapolis came under scrutiny after a right-wing influencer alleged the facilities were fraudulent. That investigation prompted National Review reporter Malia Marks to examine similar centers in Washington, where she found the numbers didn’t add up.

Marks, who published a story Tuesday about her investigation, told “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio that one of the first things she noticed was that the demographic numbers didn’t make sense.

She explained the Somali population in Washington is less than one quarter of 1% of the population, but when she looked at the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF), she found around 3% of the agency’s daycare centers had Somali as their primary language.

“Over-representation of 20% is not something that is really easily explained away,” Marks said. “I did the math, and Washington has a pretty low birth rate, but even considering that, every Somali woman in Washington would have to have 28 children to have natural supply and demand to explain that number of Somali daycares.

Somali-run daycare investigation leads to Our Hope

Marks said that while she didn’t have a chance to visit the different daycare centers, she went to an organization called Our Hope, formerly known as Hope Academy.

“This is a business that’s listed as a school, and so they enjoy all the tax benefits of being a school. And to be clear, I’m not alleging fraud; I’m just saying I noticed some things that didn’t make sense,” she said.

Marks noticed there was no sign, and there was no door at the establishment.

“The whole side of the building, where presumably a door would be, was fenced off,” she said. “There was an unmarked gate, but I’m not sure about the trespassing rules there, so I didn’t try to go through. And the courtyard of the building was fenced off.”

On the other side of the courtyard was a church that had been converted into a mosque, Marks explained, but she didn’t want to enter as a woman without a hijab. When she went around the back of the building, the outside was covered in blackberry brambles. She looked on the second floor and saw sagging blinds and rooms filled to the top of the ceiling with boxes. The only part that looked like a play area was a knocked-over basketball hoop next to the alley where cars would drive by.

DCYF did not respond to the National Review’s request for comment, and when Malia contacted the daycare centers, she got meager responses.

“A lot of the daycares that we reached out to did not choose to comment. As soon as they were told they were speaking to a reporter, if they had answered the phone, they hung up,” she said. “The nonprofits that we called, either the phone line wasn’t working, or Hope Academy, when I called them, I got put through to an automated message that asked us if we wanted special deals on dream vacations. So these places were not happy to comment or help clear up our confusion.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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