Rep. Omar’s phone, computers, and passport seized

Federal agents who searched the Washington home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minnesota, on Oct. 12 took her cellphone, notebooks, personal computers, and passport, and a Minnesota grand jury has issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to some of her relatives, according to The Wall Street Journal. The investigation is aimed at building a case to strip the Democrat of her U.S. citizenship and deport her, according to U.S. officials and others familiar with the probe.

“President Trump would love to eliminate one of the most effective progressive voices in Congress,” Omar’s office said in a statement Wednesday. “There is no basis for this.”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Homeland Security agents executed a court-authorized search and declined to elaborate. Only Omar and her husband were home at the time of the raid. 

Because grand jury proceedings are subject to secrecy, details about the investigation are difficult to obtain. One person familiar with the proceedings who spoke to the Journal said investigators are examining Omar’s family’s immigration paperwork. 

At the center of the probe is whether Omar or her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, changed her age on her citizenship application to show she was 17 rather than 18. If she was 17 when her father applied for citizenship, she would have qualified automatically, but if she was 18, she would have to apply separately for citizenship. Her late father brought the family to the U.S. from a Kenyan refugee camp in 1995, after serving for more than 10 years as a colonel in the Somali military under dictator Siad Barre. 

As Zeale News reported, Omar’s staff asked in 2019 that a Minnesota state library change her listed birth year from 1981 to 1982. No evidence has surfaced that the library’s change affected any immigration record.

The Journal reported that Homeland Security Investigations examined a similar tip under the Biden administration but did not proceed for lack of evidence of fraud. 

Since Trump returned to the White House for his second term, the administration has pursued stripping citizenship from around 200 people, many for committing crimes. This national effort far outpaces historic rates of around 12 per year. 

To remove a person’s citizenship, the DOJ must sue in federal court and prove the person lied in a material way. Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, explained to Zeale News that prosecutors would need to prove that Omar lied about her own age rather than her father lying on her behalf. 

“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.”

As of press time, no investigation-related charges have been filed against Omar. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, said her office is also investigating Omar’s financial disclosures. “There are several investigations going on,” Pirro said Oct. 13 on Fox News. “If there was a crime that was committed it will be prosecuted.”