Feds examine Rep. Ilhan Omar’s immigration history, finances

Federal investigators are examining the immigration history of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., including whether her late father made false statements and whether she was a minor, as she has claimed, when she became a citizen. Separately, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said her office is examining Omar’s financial disclosures.

Omar has characterized the investigations as “an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.” But Vice President JD Vance told Fox News that facts and the law are driving the administration’s approach. 

“And if justice requires something else be done, then, of course, we’ll take a step when we have to,” he added.

The Justice Department confirmed to Fox News that agents from Homeland Security Investigations executed “a judicially authorized search warrant” on Omar’s D.C.-area home as part of “an ongoing federal criminal investigation.” Judge Matthew Sharbaugh, who is a registered Democrat and was appointed under the Biden administration, approved the search warrant. 

The New York Times reported that the warrant listed potential immigration crimes, including false statements and fraud in immigration paperwork, as well as conspiracy. The Times also reported that investigators subpoenaed Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor, and at least one other relative, and that the inquiry includes whether her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, “lied or omitted information” on immigration forms before he became a citizen. 

Omar has said she became a citizen in 2000 through her father’s naturalization, before she turned 18. Her former primary opponent, AJ Kern, has questioned whether she was indeed still a minor at the time, and a state judge dismissed a lawsuit Kern filed seeking proof of her citizenship for lack of jurisdiction.

Minnesota’s Legislative Reference Library listed Omar’s birth date as Oct. 4, 1981, until 2019. The New York Post reported that her congressional staff asked the library in May 2019 to change the year to 1982, and the library director wrote that the staff “requested that we change it to 1982,” according to Breitbart’s account. A 1982 birth year would have kept her under 18 until October 2000. The director also wrote that the original entry had not been supported by documentation, and neither report shows the change affected any immigration record. 

On finances, Pirro said her office is examining filings that showed the combined value of two businesses tied to Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, rising from $15,000-$51,000 in 2023 to $6 million-$30 million in 2024, Fox reported. Omar amended the filings in April, lowering the range to $18,004-$95,000, and her office said the originals did not properly account for liabilities. 

Omar’s father, who died in 2020, was a Somali National Army colonel who commanded a regiment in the 1977-78 war with Ethiopia, according to his obituary in the Minnesota outlet Sahan Journal, which cited a former fellow colonel. His army career occurred during the dictatorship of Siad Barre, who between 1978 and 1991 ordered the Somali military to massacre civilians and commit genocide in the north of the country. 

“He was a full colonel in Siad Barre’s military regime,” Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, an Oxford University researcher, told the Post, which reported his claim that Nur Omar Mohamed stayed loyal to the regime. Ingiriis further alleged that Omar’s father misrepresented himself as a refugee when the family sought asylum in 1995. 

Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center who worked as a Foreign Service Officer from 1999 to 2022, told Zeale News that such investigations focus on the accuracy of statements made during the immigration process. “It’s not ‘paperwork’ in question, it’s the accuracy of facts attested under oath during the immigration process, orally or in writing,” he said.

Hankinson said investigators could examine statements in her parents’ refugee applications, including claims about family relationships. Drawing on his work as a former consul general in Nairobi, he said applicants often “lie and claim their cousins, distant relatives, or even strangers are their children,” claims that can require DNA testing to verify biological relationships. 

He said investigators distinguish ordinary mistakes, such as misspelling a street name or forgetting a previous address, from deliberately misrepresenting someone’s identity or relationship to an applicant to obtain an immigration benefit. 

“It’s lying with the knowledge that without that lie, you would not get the immigration benefit — that’s the ‘material’ part,” he said.

“Having done thousands of visas, and encountered every type of fraud imaginable, I would not be at all surprised to find that Omar’s father misrepresented material facts in his various applications and attestations,” Hankinson said. “The State Department considers some countries ‘high fraud’ for consular purposes, and none higher than Somalia. There are few records there at all, corruption is endemic, and people can make things up with little way to verify the truth.” 

Hankinson’s comments were general, and no records showing misstatements by Omar’s father have been made public.

Hankinson emphasized that any misrepresentations by Omar’s parents would be their responsibility, not hers. The question about Omar’s own conduct, he said, is whether she signed a document or affirmed the same information after turning 18. 

“If she signed a document or attested to the same facts as her father did after she reached majority, she’d be on the hook,” he said. “If her father was to blame for everything, as he is now deceased, that would be a harder knot to unravel and she’d likely prevail in immigration proceedings.”