The Basilica or the Mosque? Mass Migration to Maine

The basilica and the mosque, two structures, two houses of worship, blocks apart on a map, but oceans apart in worldview and in the consequences for our country. These two divergent buildings in Lewiston, Maine, reflect tangibly the effects of miserable policies upon a once orderly middle American community. If these stones and bricks could speak, they would convey critical lessons about mass migration, Islam, and the destruction of working class cities like Lewiston, Maine.

Now, when you think of Maine, you probably conjure up images of stunning seacoasts, delicious lobsters, and deep wilderness. And all of those images, they're very real. They're very valid. But there's another Maine, too. A different Maine, as explored by YouTube traveling host star Peter Santanello.

He correctly calls Lewiston the most dangerous city in America's safest state. Now, much of that decline flows from awful immigration policies that brought hordes of immigrants into America. When I went there amidst the gloom, I was stunned, stunned by the enduring beauty of the Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul.

Look at this magnificent cathedral in Lewiston, Maine. French Catholics founded and settled this place, and they built amazing structures to glorify God. They brought the best from the old world to the new world. Very different reality now, with tens of thousands of African third world migrants arriving in this country, especially Somalis settling here in Lewiston. They're not building these kinds of structures. They're not coming here to make great things. They're coming to take from the United States through schemes, through frauds, not assimilating.

That's the kind of immigration we used to have. That's what we still should have. Now, I've been blessed. I've seen most of the great cathedrals of Europe, and I will tell you that this breathtaking church in small-town Maine It compares to those medieval wonders of the continent. Today, it forms a powerful and tragic contrast against a town that devolves into dysfunction and a foreign hostile diaspora that refuses, refuses to assimilate or to even become productive, even after decades in America for many of them.

This beautiful basilica, it was built by blue-collar French immigrants. They reached deeply and gave willingly to their new home, masons and textile workers, proud to construct something of greatness for the glory of God, for the benefit of their new homeland, and to the credit of their proud community of new Americans. But just a stone's throw from that very site. There sits a mosque, a pathetic structure, not remotely indicative of community pride or adherence to American expectations for architecture and beauty. Now, the mosque is rather conveniently located right next door to an NGO, a non-governmental organization that uses your tax dollars to dole out an endless stream of benefits to migrants who remain overwhelmingly hostile to the very country that gave them refuge from the.

Poverty and violence of their Somali homeland. The whole agenda forms a bedrock of the current Democratic Party, from Rashida Tlaib to Ilhan Omar. Here's my reporting from that site. Again, just a short walk from the spires of the Basilica.

So, I'm here in Lewiston, Maine, in small-town, rural Maine, and there is a mosque. That might surprise you, but that's because there are thousands and thousands of Somalis in Lewiston, Maine. This is not working at all for this community, not working at large for the United States, this mass migration from the third world, particularly Muslim mass migration. I'm filming a documentary, a lot more content ahead. Steve Robinson is a Maine native and editor of The Maine Wire, the leading independent news platform in the state.

He's gained national attention as a rising star of the alternative media, relentlessly pursuing truth. Through facts and source reporting. So Steve Robinson, we're here in Lewiston, Maine. Which, for folks who don't know it, was a working class town, formerly very prosperous in sort of the industrial era, settled by mostly French Catholic immigrants to the United States, fell on hard times, and has recently become the center of a lot of controversy and a big migration from the third world of immigrants into the United States and into Lewiston, Maine.

So, we're shining a light on that and some of the problems there. You have been fantastic at... Exposing a lot of what's going on in Maine, good and bad. So, Steve, I think it will shock a lot of people when they think about New England. They don't think about third world Muslim migrants, and yet a massive amount were effectively transplanted, placed in Lewiston, Maine. How did that happen?

Well, it emerged out of the civil war in Somalia, which is not really a classic civil war. It is a multipolar clan warfare ongoing to this day, and out of that conflict and humanitarian crisis emerged a flow of refugees and asylum seekers and migrants into the United States, primarily into Atlanta because of the Delta hub at the time, and there were some refugee resettlement NGOs. These are Nonprofits getting government money to resettle migrants throughout the United States.

I guess Atlanta got crowded. There became the need for more housing for Somali refugees, and there was a Catholic Charities main operation in Portland. And so they were welcomed up there by Catholic Charities, who coordinated the flow of Somalis initially. This is circa 2000 to 2005. And how has assimilation gone? Are they becoming Americans?

Well, to the extent that Americans engage in scams, you know, I mean, the benefits programs have just gotten way, way out of control with the Medicaid fraud. The data points toward massive welfare dependency, and we're now two generations in. It's been 25 years since this experiment in Somali refugee resettlement in Lewiston began, and I don't think anyone can make a fair argument that it's been an economic success or a cultural success. There have been serious negatives for both sides. In the early 2000s, there was a Somali refugee who came from Minnesota to Lewiston to start a money transfer business.

His name was Hussein Hirsi Ahmed. He started the Lewiston arm of the Minnesota-based money transfer company called Ka Express, later became Ramadpay. It still exists today. It is a very big remittances company. It exists to funnel American money, mostly welfare fraud, I would say, back to Somalia. He, from 2021 to 2023, was the finance minister of Jubaland, Somalia, which is the semi-autonomous state in southern Somalia where al-Shabaab has the most control. He's back in Lewiston right now. He's probably just a few miles from us, working at a business that has multiple money transfer licenses and multiple Medicaid provider licenses.

So, he is a... Quasi-public official in Somalia, living in Lewiston, Maine, running a business that in large part is facilitating the transfer of money from Somalians back to, in America, back to Somalia, and in your view, largely stolen funds. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah, I think it's a fair assessment. He's got the EBT card machine as well, and right across the street from him is Mama Shukri's.

Mogadishu store, which was raided at the end of last year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for allegedly $4 million in snap fraud. Swiping the benefits for EBT. Snap fraud, meaning food stamps. Food stamp fraud, yeah. So which way, America, do we want makers or takers? Will we pursue legal, limited immigration that fosters American greatness, demands self-sufficiency, and prioritizes the prerogatives of our citizens, or… Will we follow Europe down a dreadful path to civilizational erasure by inviting in masses of migrants, masses of migrants who reject our values and, in the case of the Somalis, systemically scam us and exploit our goodwill?

On that point, you're probably aware of the massive scams in Minneapolis, where migrants steal from the good citizens of Minnesota at epic levels. The Twin Cities might be the worst such example, and the Dearborn, Michigan area stands out too, but this nonsense, these schemes, they unfold all across America, from red Texas to the hinterlands of inland Maine. Here's some local reporting on these giant... fraud schemes. First at six, more allegations of fraud, this time involving two owners and an employee at immigrant-owned businesses in Lewiston.

Yeah, two of those three individuals are now facing federal charges for tax fraud. One defendant, Abdi Fida Abdi, owns Momo Interpreters in Lewiston. The other is Rakiya Mohamed, owner of Reliable Language Resources. Prosecutors accuse both of participating in a scheme with Mohamed's mother, a former employee of Bright Future Healthier You. Let me ask you about that health care fraud issue, because this seems to be a very common theme. What's going on in Maine? What's going on in Lewiston? Well, I think the Medicaid program is uniquely vulnerable to fraud because it is funded by the federal government and administered by the states.

So, the federal government just gives each state a big bucket of money and says, here, hand it out. Really, the beginning of Medicaid fraud in Maine, within the Somali community, was a guy named Abdallah Hiali, who started a business called Gateway Community Services.

So, this guy has overbilled Medicaid millions of dollars, and at the time, in 2024, he was running for president of Jubilant. He was like the Barack Obama of Jubilant running for office over there. We have Abdullahi Ali on camera bragging about funding arms deals with money he raised in America while he's the poster child for Somali-American refugees running Gateway Community Services, which the scandal there got so bad that even the Democratic governor turned off the money.

And right now, Ali is on the lam in Kenya, won't set foot back in the U.S. because he's worried about a three-letter agency waiting for him. He started the model, and then there were other people who said, hey, hold on a second. I don't have to work for Abdullahi Ali. I can just start my own business. In any community, if you see your friend or your neighbor is getting really rich, and all he's doing is sending invoices to the Department of Health and Human Services for a fake company and getting paid.

To do no work, you're going to copy him. Like, why are you going to go bust your ass on a lobster boat when you can just send invoices to the Department of Health and Human Services? Sure. You know, a lot of the world doesn't think like the Western mind, doesn't think like the American mind. And for a lot of the third world, if you can work a scam... That's kind of honorable, actually. It's kind of noble in a sense, isn't it, to their way of thinking?

Yes, exactly. They think that they are smart, very good businessmen for being able to exploit the Medicaid system. I am of the opinion that it is backed by political factions in foreign countries. You can't tell me that if remittances from Maine or Minnesota are such a huge important thing for your economy, that the politicians in Somalia aren't going to do everything they can to increase that pipeline and to support it and to make sure that more money is flowing in. Thank you.

Nation-state level fraud against the American taxpayer. I think it is economic terrorism, is what it is, and it should be treated that way. Let me ask you specifically about Catholic Charities, and I say this as a committed Catholic, currently practicing Catholic, somebody who went to Catholic school my entire life, dearly loves the church. I think Catholic Charities has acted essentially as almost a trafficking organization into the United States. Am I being too harsh? What is your view from Maine on Catholic Charities?

The activities of Catholic Charities in Maine. I think that the first thing that comes to mind is the fact that the families are indiscernible from a human trafficking organization. I think that they are encouraging a culture of dependency, and they are kind of a, let us bust the families in, let us get them free housing, and then back away, our job is done. Now, in terms of conflict here in Lewiston, there was recently an incident, which I'd like you to describe to us, please.

The Somalis seemed to be anti-dog and didn't like somebody walking dogs. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, well, there's a mosque on Bartlett Street, which is, you would not recognize this building as a house of worship if you saw it. It's kind of grimy, and right next door to it, there's this Muslim refugee resettlement.

So, there's this kind of enclave there that the Somali community leaders, they operate some taxpayer-funded businesses, and it's like a hub for more than just religious purposes. And just last week, somebody was trying to walk their dog down the sidewalk, and the Somalis came out and began screaming at this individual and tried to stop him. The police eventually were called, and a few Somalis were arrested in violence against my reporter several times. What is the problem with dogs? It goes back to the Koran, right?

They are unclean. They are unclean animals. I think it is either the Koran or the Hadith, you know, the sayings of Muhammad. So, we as Americans, though, who love dogs, and walking a dog, walking man's best friend in Lewiston. Invites a confrontation with Somalis. Yeah, a violent confrontation, yeah. Steve, let me ask you about Maine more generally, even outside of the migrant issue. It seems to me that Maine, it's a beautiful place, wonderful people, amazing topography, right? The landscape here, all of it, so many resources.

But it seems like it's kind of two states. There's sort of the coastal Maine that a lot of folks might be more aware of, and then there's the rest of Maine. Can you tell us about that? For sure. I mean, it's out-of-staters coming in to buy up the coast, right? There's no more beautiful place. in the Maine coast. So who wouldn't want to live there? John Travolta, Martha Stewart, everybody with a bunch of money, they want to have a place in Maine.

It's beautiful. So you have these coastal enclaves that tend to be disproportionately left-wing Democrat cities. There's lots of baby boomers. You don't have to be famous just to have a place up in Maine on the coast. They tend to come from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York. They bring their politics with them. They settle down, and it's, you know, they're just like boomer leftists going crazy in these really wealthy enclaves where they're insulated from the consequences of the political party that they support.

There aren't any wealthy Democrats who are worried about catching a straight bullet on Bartlett Street in Lewiston. What we have is this murky term called asylum seeker. This is the term that the NPR crowd has created out of thin air. All asylum seeker means is that you're an illegal alien who sent a letter to the Justice Department. Hey, I want to get in line for asylum. Under the Biden administration, that line stretched to 4 million, 5 million. You have this quasi-legal status.

You're on parole, effectively, as an immigration violator, but you're a defensive or even offensive asylum claimant. If your asylum claim is rejected, as 50% to 80% of them are, then you're expected to self-deport. But there's no mechanism to remove you from the country, and there's no incentive for you to leave because... You have already been given a work permit, work authorization after six months by the federal government that is a proxy for a social security number. So, you can live and work in the United States.

You can go get a mortgage. You can go get a loan for a car as an asylum seeker who has no legal status to remain in the country. You just have parole. You have like a deferment of your decision, and they broke it on purpose. They broke it on purpose because it accomplished their objectives, because the longer any illegal alien remains in the U.S., the more difficult it becomes to deport them. And, you know, you can look at the crime stats out of Lewiston.

We got the Lewiston shooting incident data from the Lewiston Police Department and just made a graphic of it, and the gun violence in Lewiston is way out of control. You can talk to any cop or any resident in Lewiston, and they will tell you that one of the biggest problems they have in terms of public safety is youth gun violence. Lewiston has about 6,000 Somali migrants. That is a large block for a town of only 38,000 residents. The Dems claim to be the party of education, but the schools in Lewiston provide a stark warning about the dangers of mass migration.

Right now, 60% of children in grades 6 through 12 in Lewiston public schools are foreign language students. Now, what are the predictable results in those schools? Well, according to state testing data, only 10% of children at local Longlea School meet grade expectations in math. The worst in the state of Maine. Four Lewiston schools, four of them, are in the bottom 10 in English language arts of all public schools in the state. When young people in Lewiston, when they aren't failing to learn, far too many of them engage in crime.

The town is now number one in Maine in gun violence per capita, mostly led by rising teen violence. Just 25 years ago, gun crime was almost unheard of in Lewiston. And yet, the leftists cheer. They cheer on this suicidal empathy, pretending that surrender of America is somehow noble? Here is scholar Gad Saad on this defeatism. So, Islamophilia, the love of Islam, stems from several parasitic ideas, one of which is that Islam, because it is in the minority status in the West so far, it is viewed as the underdog, and of course, progressives with their suicidal empathy.

Love to view the underdog as downtrodden, and therefore, we need to protect it. Now, I'm not picking on some small sampling of Muslims in America, by the way. For instance, the latest surveys show that an appalling 44% of U.S. Muslims are pro-Hamas. They report to pollsters that they support the deadly purveyors of jihad against the West and against America. Here, News Nation host Leland Vittert, who spent years covering wars in the Mideast, he reacts to this threat to America from within America.

The most stunning statistic I know of seeing is that 44% of Muslims have a favorable view of Hamas. That's 44% of Muslims in America. For all the talk that it's Islamophobia to discuss how Muslims aren't assimilating into the United States or the dangers of the rise of Islam in the United States, hogwash. And that is used by both the Islamic community and the socialist left now to try and quiet anyone from talking about what is a real threat. My own extensive polling shows.

That Americans wake up. To the very real threats from Islam within our homeland, for instance, in Michigan, with a very substantial and powerful Muslim migrant influx by a whopping six to one margin, six to one, the citizens of that state say we have too many Muslim immigrants versus too few. Even among Kamala Harris voters in Michigan, they disapprove of mass Muslim migration by a nearly two to one margin. Thankfully, President Trump ascertains the reality and the dangers. You've seen what happened when Europe opened their doors to jihad.

Look at Paris. Look at London. They're no longer recognizable. And I'm going to get myself into a lot of trouble with the folks in Paris and the folks in London, but you know what? That's the fact. They are no longer recognizable, and we can't let that happen to our country.

So, what are the solutions? It seems to me one would be massively restricting taxing remittances. Is that one of the solutions? Well, yes. We're not as much concerned with the immigrant who takes advantage of a benefit program by having an EBT card or having free healthcare. It's the ones who are running the businesses that funnel all of those people into their business and are billing $15, $20, $30 million a year. That's what you have to target. I think a tax on remittances would be good.

Ultimately, what you have to do is de-license, de-register every single Medicaid provider. You've got to kick them all out and force them to re-enroll, and you have to have a higher threshold of proof. But if government is going to be as powerful as it is and spend as much as it is, Shouldn't those funds at least be flowing overwhelmingly to American citizens and not to foreigners that we've imported? Well, that's what you would hope. I think any government that is taxing its citizens to reward non-citizens is illegitimate.

I mean, that is a vile, evil act to tax lifelong manors for the benefit of African migrants. That is any government that's doing that has lost legitimacy. And I think that every single dollar that is defrauded from the Medicaid program and piped over to a foreign country, or even just wasted on luxury cars, that is a dollar that could be going to support a single mom in rural Maine who's struggling to raise kids and wants to work, wants to have a job, wants to improve the circumstances of her life through hard work rather than gaming the system.

But these programs are making Maine inhospitable. The culture of Maine is very much a... Just leave me alone. You do your thing, I'll do my thing. Just keep your nose out of each other's business. And that's what attracts a lot of people to Maine, but it also has left us with no immune system to repel these hostile acts by out-of-state political forces. And whether it's George Soros and Hans-Jörg Weiss and these people trying to spend money to influence our politics, or organized crime factions with foreign roots.

We just don't have an immune system to repel this kind of activity, because people in rural Maine, they're just too nice about it, and they're like, eh, well, you know, whatever. Let them do their thing, but it's gotten to a breaking point now. I don't know how much longer it can last. I think the 2026 election is probably existential for the state of Maine.

The basilica or the mosque? The best of the old world brought to the new? Or the tribalism and corruption of the third world polluting America? Now, we have a choice. We have agency. We control our destiny. For now. At some point, it will be too late.

It already is too late for Europe. Will you defend our culture? Your family? In our inheritance, will we welcome our destiny as the culmination of Western civilization and choose patriotism, beauty, accountability? Will we choose the Basilica?