Razor blades often used before carrying out female genital mutilation. (REUTERS/James Akena)
For some within Minnesota’s Somali community, the issue is less about public crime statistics and more about private silence — a practice survivors say is carried in secrecy, shame and fear.
The lack of prosecutions comes amid broader scrutiny of how Minnesota agencies handle oversight failures, including high-profile welfare and daycare fraud cases in which prosecutors allege billions of taxpayer dollars were siphoned off while warning signs went unaddressed. Investigators and watchdogs later concluded that officials were reluctant to probe deeply in culturally sensitive contexts — a reluctance, critics say, allowed large-scale violations to persist in plain sight.
The estimate of more than half a million survivors in the United States comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent national analysis, published in 2016.
Together, the scale of the issue and the difficulty of detection have raised questions about whether Minnesota’s ban on FGM is being effectively enforced when the crime is often carried out in secrecy.
Tools used to perform medicalized female genital mutilation (FGM) procedures are displayed in Kisii, Kenya in 2023. (Simon Maina/AFP)
The damage followed her into adulthood, she said, later requiring surgery and, in her view, contributing to multiple miscarriages. She also said intercourse was very difficult.
She said the practice is often driven by marriage expectations, adding that in some communities men are reluctant to marry women who have not undergone the procedure.
"It’s tied to dowry. It’s tied to marriage," she said, referring to the financial and social expectations placed on families when arranging marriages. "It’s tied to what men expect," she said. "Families believe it protects a girl’s value."
She said silence remains one of the biggest barriers to enforcement. She is the executive director of the nonprofit Somaliweyn Relief Agency (SRA), which seeks to raise awareness about the practice.
"You don’t talk about it," she said. "You’re told to stay quiet."
While she said she cannot confirm specific cases inside Minnesota, she said she believes some families take girls back to Somalia during school breaks to have the procedure performed.
Her warning mirrors how some of the only known U.S. cases have surfaced.
In a high-profile federal case in Michigan in 2017, prosecutors alleged that two young girls were taken from Minnesota to undergo female genital mutilation. The case later collapsed because the judge ruled that Congress did not clearly have the constitutional authority, at the time, which expanded federal jurisdiction in cases involving interstate or international travel.
That ruling prompted Congress to strengthen the statute, a change signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2021 under the Stop FGM Act, which expanded federal jurisdiction in cases involving interstate or international travel.
The AHA Foundation said it is pushing for President Donald Trump to sign an executive order to make combating female genital mutilation a national priority. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Some Minnesota state lawmakers have introduced legislation this session to establish a "task force on prevention of female genital mutilation" — a step that Rep. Mary Franson said reflects concerns raised by women in the community that the practice may be occurring or going undetected in Minnesota.
Franson said the legislation was prompted by concerns raised by women in the Somali community. The bill’s chief author is Rep. Huldah Momanyi-Hiltsley, a Democrat of Kenyan heritage, and it is co-sponsored by Franson along with Democratic Reps. Kristin Bahner, Kristi Pursell and Anquam Mahamoud, who is Somali-American. None of them responded to multiple Fox News Digital requests for comment.
Franson said she became a focal point of opposition once she became publicly associated with the bill.
"The bill was brought forward by women in the Somali community. I was the chief author, but then Democrats told one of the DFL women that if I carried the bill, they would not support it," Franson said. "Of course, it’s because they believe I am a racist."
Franson, who is white, first introduced FGM-related legislation in 2017 that would have classified the practice as child abuse and clarified parental accountability. That effort stalled and never became law.
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At the federal level, Congress criminalized female genital mutilation in 1996 and later expanded federal jurisdiction in 2018 under legislation signed by then-President Donald Trump, explicitly covering cases involving interstate or international travel.
Even so, prosecutions nationwide have remained rare, with the only widely cited state-level conviction occurring in Georgia in 2006, where a woman was convicted under Georgia state law for performing FGM on a minor.
In Minnesota, where the practice has been a felony since 1994, there is no public record of a single criminal prosecution — raising an unavoidable question: with laws on the books and a documented survivor population, who is responsible for enforcing the ban, and why have prosecutions not followed?
Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.
You can send tips to michael.dorgan@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/its-hidden-female-genital-mutilation-secret-shame-minnesota-somalis