Minnesota’s Alpha News reports:
Minnesota DHS takes a step to improve background checks.
It’s about time.
The requirement will also apply to contractors, interns, volunteers, and existing employees with Criminal Justice Information Services access — with the background check repeated every five years.
The Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) is likely the state’s most fraud-ridden agency. To be clear, the move doesn’t apply to all employees, just those few with access to sensitive criminal information databases, like those staffing the Office of Inspector General.
Alpha News adds:
The move follows just weeks after Alpha News broke the story about a convicted sex felon—on the state’s predatory offender list—who somehow landed a director-level job in state government.
Alpha News is referring to Wilson Tindi, who performed as chief internal auditor for two state agencies (Education and Pollution Control) but not DHS.
The timing of the [DHS] update follows just weeks after Alpha News exclusively reported that Wilson Tindi, Kenyan national once in ICE custody, steadily climbed the ladder in state government—despite being a convicted sex felon on the state’s predatory offender list.
In addition, it appears that Tindi is/was an illegal alien.
It’s been nearly two months since the Tindi story broke. We would like to have seen much broader changes to employee vetting across state government.
How many more like him populate the state payroll, hiding in plain sight? For public safety, the state must check immediately, and for months now, with DHS’s narrow exception, they have refused to look. For public confidence, they must vet everyone.
Under Tim Walz, state government declared background checks as optional, and likely racist, during the hiring and promotion process. Taxpayers fund 37,000 bureaucrats, as Minnesota government ranks as the state’s 2nd largest employer, after the famed Mayo Clinic. Odds dictate that there are more Tindis out there.
The Kenyan-born Tindi, age 42, served as the Chief Audit Officer, at an annual salary of $145,000, at the state Department of Education (MDE), which employs 500 staffers.
Court records reveal that late one night in November 2014, Wilson Tindi broke into a stranger’s apartment in Minneapolis and committed criminal sexual contact with a sleeping woman in her own bed. Prosecutors had dropped an earlier case, involving a different victim but a similar set of facts.
Following his sex felony guilty plea in 2016 (prosecutors dropped a first-degree felony burglary charge) he spent a few months in a county workhouse, followed by more than a year in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, which ultimately ended in (another) abandoned deportation attempt.
I’m told that illegal aliens don’t get full due process under the American judicial system. Mr. Tindi, over the course of his two separate felony sex cases, two separate drunk driving cases, and many immigration-related cases, received hearings in state district courts (plural), the Minnesota Court of Appeals, federal district court, the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, U.S. Immigration Court, and the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals.
Most full American citizens don’t receive that much due process in a lifetime. Tindi has lost cases at every level, although you could credit him with a partial victory at the 8th Circuit. Tindi owes more than $1,250 in unpaid court fines.
Reviewing Tindi’s record provides a case study in the history of our broken immigration system.
He arrived in America from Kenya in 2005, overstaying his tourist visa. The Feds abandoned an earlier (2009) attempt at deportation. At some point, he obtained a green card as a permanent (legal) resident. He has never been a U.S. citizen.
The state Pollution Control Agency (PCA) hired Tindi in 2018 for their internal audit function. He rose to become their top audit officer. Early in 2025, MDE scooped him up to fill the same role at their agency. Alpha News then broke the Tindi story and has driven the media coverage. The same day Alpha News first contacted MDE, Tindi’s status converted to “not a current employee.” MDE quietly removed his name from the agency’s executive org chart.
Alpha News and others pressed MDE about its hiring practices and background check policy. Minnesota follows a longstanding “Ban the Box” policy, blocking agencies from asking prospective job candidates about their past criminal history. We believe in second chances here.
For their part, MDE switches between citing privacy concerns, assuring the public that it followed its policies in Tindi’s case, and claiming that all the policies have now been changed so that this won’t happen in the future.
But what about the present? Tim Walz must order the entire executive branch to do immediate and complete background checks on all current employees. The number of convicted felons, registered sex offenders, and/or illegal aliens in state jobs should be zero, not unknown.
We constantly hear about “the jobs Americans won’t do.” At two different agencies, Wilson held the highest rank available to a Minnesota career public servant (Director). For his part, Wilson Tindi told KSTP, among other outlets, that he is the victim of a “retroactive character assassination” and denies any and all wrongdoing.
Neither Gov. Tim Walz nor local county prosecutor Mary Moriarty has said anything about the matter of Tindi’s hiring or his several criminal cases, respectively.
Despite Mr. Tindi’s receiving relatively little media coverage, Snopes.Com deemed the situation worthy of a fact check. Snopes frames the question as centering on who hired Tindi rather than who promoted him to the highest civil servant ranks.
Snopes largely lets Gov. Walz off the hook for Tindi’s hiring and promotion since he was originally brought on board seven years ago (2018, while still on criminal probation as a convicted felon) as an entry-level hire at PCA during the administration of Walz’s immediate Democratic predecessor, Mark Dayton.
Though now unemployed, Wilson Tindi isn’t quite off the hook. State court requires his attendance late this month in the latest drunk driving case.
If Walz acted now, he could complete all 37,000 background checks by the time that case concludes.
A earlier version of this piece appeared at AmericanExperiment.Com.
