For five years, former TSA agent Liz Jaksa stood at the security checkpoint inside Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport and watched scenes that she says never felt normal, even in a job where you expect the unexpected.
Now, in an interview with Liz Collin on Liz Collin Reports, she is describing what she saw in detail: suitcases packed with millions of dollars in cash, moving through MSP again and again, carried by the same type of couriers, and raising questions that she feels law enforcement and political leaders still haven’t answered.
Jaksa says that at the time, the whole thing felt unsettling but disconnected, like suspicious pieces of a puzzle no one seemed interested in solving.
Only after large-scale fraud cases and national headlines about money leaving Minnesota did those pieces start to lock together in her mind, and that is why she says she is speaking publicly now.
“The First Time You Open a Suitcase and See Millions of Dollars”
In her conversation with Collin, Jaksa explains that she worked as a TSA agent at MSP from 2016 to 2021, screening passengers and their bags like thousands of agents do at airports across the country.
She says that in the middle of that routine work, something extraordinary kept happening: bags filled not with clothes, electronics, or toiletries, but with neatly stacked bundles of cash.
“I’ve seen a lot of things,” she tells Collin, “but the most shocking is exactly that. I saw suitcases filled with millions of dollars of cash.” She remembers that first moment vividly, describing how it “absolutely blew my mind” to unzip a suitcase and realize that it wasn’t a few envelopes or a handful of bills, but a full case of currency.
According to Jaksa, this was not rare or random; it appeared as a pattern that repeated itself on a regular basis.
She estimates to Collin that it seemed to happen roughly once a week, sometimes more, over the course of her five years at MSP. Based on the frequency and the amounts she says she saw in individual bags, she believes that “in the five years I was there, I believe a billion dollars went through the airport” in cash.
That number is her personal estimate, not an official figure, but it gives a sense of the scale she believes was involved.
A Consistent Profile and a Familiar Process
What unsettled her even more, Jaksa says, was how consistent everything looked each time. She tells Collin the “MO was always two Somali men traveling in pairs,” often with each man carrying a suitcase, although in some cases only one piece of luggage held the money.
From her vantage point as a TSA officer, the process was fairly straightforward: a flagged bag would be pulled aside, brought to a private screening room, opened, and inspected.
“We would open the suitcase and make sure that that’s all it was, was stacks of cash,” she explains. Once TSA confirmed there were no weapons or prohibited items, a law enforcement officer—what she refers to as a “LEO” – would be called in. That officer would check the travelers’ identification, ask some questions, and, according to Jaksa, always photograph their IDs and likely their plane tickets as well.
To her, that means the government already has a paper and digital trail of who was carrying this money, where they were flying, and when they passed through MSP.
“With all the cameras at the airport,” she tells Collin, “if they started there, they could probably find each and every individual that brought money through the checkpoint.” In other words, the mystery is not whether the activity can be traced; the mystery is why no one appears to have followed that trail.
Cash Is Legal – But the Pattern Was Hard to Ignore
Collin is careful in her segment to note a vital legal point: traveling with large amounts of cash is not, by itself, illegal, as long as the money is properly declared and documented when required. People can have legitimate reasons for moving capital, and TSA’s primary mission is security, not policing financial crimes.
Jaksa doesn’t dispute that, but she argues that the volume, regularity, and profile of what she saw went far beyond what most people would consider everyday activity.
It was not a rare gambler’s payout or the occasional business deal; it looked, to her, like structured movement of huge sums of cash, leaving the same airport in similar fashion, week after week and year after year.
She says it bothered her back then, even before the current wave of fraud headlines, because the reaction inside the system didn’t seem to match the seriousness of what she was witnessing.
Jaksa describes the official response as almost casual: law enforcement would appear, check documents, take photos, and then allow the passengers to proceed. From her perspective, you can feel her frustration: she had the sense that everyone was going through the motions – logging the ID, preserving the appearance of due diligence – without truly investigating where the money was headed or how it had been obtained.
A Bag of Passports and More Unanswered Questions
The suitcases weren’t the only thing that raised red flags for her. In the interview with Collin, Jaksa describes another incident she says she will never forget: a Somali man carrying a bag filled with brand new passports. She says the carry-on was packed with passports rather than clothes or personal items, and yet, just like the cash couriers, he was allowed to continue through security.
“He was allowed to get through the checkpoint,” she tells Collin. “So where he went with those passports is anybody’s guess.”
In isolation, one odd bag could be dismissed as an anomaly. But when you put it alongside repeated suitcases of cash and later fraud allegations, it becomes part of the larger picture that she believes authorities failed to assemble in time.
From a policy perspective, that detail shows the same core problem: the system is very good at seeing things – through scanners, cameras, and ID checks – but far less reliable at acting decisively when those things don’t make sense. The tools to investigate exist; what Jaksa questions is whether the will to use them ever did.
Connecting the Cash to Fraud and Terrorism Claims
The most explosive part of Collin’s segment comes when she connects Jaksa’s recollections to broader reporting about fraud and potential terrorism financing.
Collin cites a piece in City Journal that reported federal counterterrorism sources had confirmed that millions of dollars in stolen funds were sent back to Somalia. In that same reporting, a confidential source claimed that “the largest funder of al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.”
Al-Shabaab is a designated terrorist group, and the suggestion that Minnesota-based fraud schemes could be indirectly fueling its operations is a serious allegation.
When Collin asks Jaksa whether, based on what she saw at MSP, she believes there is any truth to the idea that some of that money was tied to al-Shabaab, Jaksa does not hesitate.
“Knowing what I know now, absolutely,” she says. “There’s no question in my mind that that money went to al-Shabaab.” Legally, that remains her personal belief, not a conclusion reached by a court. But coming from someone who physically handled the suitcases and watched this pattern unfold in real time, her conviction gives weight to the suspicion that at least some of those flights may have been part of something far larger than ordinary cash movement.
Living With It – and Watching Leaders Look Away
Jaksa tells Collin that this has not been easy to carry privately. At the time, she says, “it just seemed like more should be done,” but she had no way to prove where the money ended up or how it connected to programs now under investigation.
In hindsight, as stories about daycare fraud, food program fraud, and other schemes involving members of the Somali community have come to light, she says the pattern she saw at MSP “certainly all makes sense.”
She also makes it clear she is deeply frustrated with how political leaders in Minnesota have handled the issue. Watching the state’s response now, she tells Collin that it is infuriating to see how little urgency there seems to be about fully unraveling where the money went and who benefited.
She specifically calls out Gov. Tim Walz and Rep. Ilhan Omar, saying they “should both resign in shame” over what she views as a failure of leadership and oversight.
That is her opinion, and others may disagree about where responsibility lies. But it reflects a broader public anger among many Minnesotans who feel that fraud was allowed to grow unchecked, and that only media pressure and federal prosecutions have forced the issue into the open.
A System That Saw Everything – and Still Missed It
The most unsettling part of Jaksa’s story is not just the image of suitcases packed with money; it is the idea that the system knew. TSA agents opened the bags. Law enforcement took photos of IDs and tickets. Cameras recorded faces and movements.
If federal agencies wanted to reconstruct the flow of cash through MSP, the raw material for that investigation should already exist.
Yet from what Jaksa describes, no serious follow-through ever happened while she was there. Her decision to come forward now is fueled by that gap between what the government is capable of doing and what it actually did.
“Minnesotans need to know that billions of dollars left through the airport and it was cash,” she tells Collin. “It was literally suitcases full of cash.”
Even if her estimate is high, and even if not every dollar was tied to fraud or terrorism, her account raises urgent questions about oversight, coordination between agencies, and political will. It’s one thing for fraud to occur in the shadows; it’s another for potential proceeds of that fraud to move through a major airport in plain sight while everyone involved technically “does their job,” then looks away.
In the end, her story is less about a single scandal and more about a test. If an experienced TSA agent can spend years watching patterns like this unfold, raise concerns, and still feel nothing real was done, that says a lot about how fragile public trust has become.
Whether investigators dig into the trail she insists is there will reveal whether the system is finally ready to confront what she believes it ignored for far too long.
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, John developed a love for the great outdoors early on. With years of experience as a wilderness guide, he’s navigated rugged terrains and unpredictable weather patterns. John is also an avid hunter and fisherman who believes in sustainable living. His focus on practical survival skills, from building shelters to purifying water, reflects his passion for preparedness. When he’s not out in the wild, you can find him sharing his knowledge through writing, hoping to inspire others to embrace self-reliance.
