Homeland Security searches Ilhan Omar’s D.C. home in criminal investigation

Federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) searched Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, D.C., home early Oct. 12 as part of an ongoing criminal investigation, officials confirmed. 

According to Fox News, which cited two sources close to the investigation, the operation began around 6 a.m. with HSI, an investigative division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), leading the operation. 

A Department of Justice (DOJ) spokesperson told the outlet that the “enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal investigation,” later describing the investigation as “criminal” in nature.

Sources familiar with the matter told multiple news outlets that the search concerned alleged immigration fraud involving Omar’s immigration paperwork — documents reportedly completed by her late father when she was a child. 

Omar, who was born in Somalia and arrived in the U.S. as a refugee in 1995, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000. 

White House border czar Tom Homan also confirmed in a Fox News appearance that authorities had executed a judge-signed search warrant but declined to discuss further details.

“There is an investigation. A warrant has been served,” Homan said. “I won’t get into the specifics of the criminal investigation. I don’t want to get ahead of Todd Blanche on that.”

Omar’s office said she has “done nothing wrong” and described the search as an “outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies” in a statement to CBS News. 

In an X post later in the day, Omar said she is “OK” and “will not be silenced.” 

“Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” she said. “For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation.”

Asked for his reaction to the reported investigation into Omar’s immigration paperwork, Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center who worked as a Foreign Service Officer from 1999-2022, 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. Principal refugees resettled in the U.S. can generally petition within two years of arrival for their spouses and children to join them through the “follow-to-join” process. 

Drawing on his work as a former consul general in Nairobi, Hankinson 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.”

He emphasized that any misrepresentations by Omar’s parents would be their responsibility, rather than hers. The question concerning Omar’s own conduct, he said, would be whether she signed a document or affirmed the same information after reaching adulthood.

“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,” Hankinson 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.”

The search comes weeks after multiple Trump administration officials acknowledged an investigation involving Omar, as Zeale News previously reported. Homan said Sept. 13 that ICE was looking into the Minnesota congresswoman. Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sept. 15 that he would not talk “about ongoing criminal investigations” when a reporter asked whether Omar was under investigation and whether the administration would seek to deport her.

Omar has also faced longstanding allegations that she married her brother in 2009 to facilitate immigration fraud, Zeale News also reported. Omar has repeatedly denied these claims.