The Trump administration is probing Rep. Ilhan Omar to revoke her citizenship and deport her if immigration fraud is proven, her office calls it authoritarian.
Homeland Security Investigations agents searched the Minnesota Democrat’s Washington-area home on Oct. 12 under a warrant tied to alleged immigration fraud and false statements. They carried out boxes of materials. Two people familiar with the matter told USA TODAY the probe aims at revoking her American citizenship and removing her from the country if investigators can show she or her relatives lied to immigration authorities when she became a citizen.
The Department of Justice has also subpoenaed some of her relatives. The timing lands less than three weeks before Omar faces voters in a race she is expected to win easily. Her office and House Democratic leaders call the entire effort political intimidation. Administration officials have publicly embraced the fraud claims for months.
Federal agents took Omar’s cellphone, notebooks, computers, and passport during the search, the New York Post reported. The Justice Department is examining whether her path to citizenship through her father’s 2000 naturalization involved concealment or misrepresentation that would open the door to denaturalization.
Omar arrived in the United States as a Somali refugee in 1995. She became a citizen in 2000 at age 17 through her father Nur Omar Mohamed’s naturalization, the route available to children under 18. Investigators are focused on whether the family misstated her age or birth date so she could qualify, according to one of the officials briefed on the matter. That official said the age question “seems to be the key focus now.”
A 2019 video that spread on conservative social media claimed she had been 18, not 17, when her father applied. Shortly after she entered Congress, reports said her staff asked Minnesota officials to change her birth year in public records from 1981 to 1982. Those record questions are the same ones covered in earlier reporting on how Ilhan Omar’s office got her listed birth year switched after she took office.
Investigators are also looking at whether her father misrepresented his military history when he sought legal status. Nur Omar Mohamed died in 2020 from complications related to the coronavirus. He would be central to any denaturalization case built on the family’s original applications.
USA TODAY noted that no evidence has emerged to support the longstanding public claims about her age or an alleged marriage to a brother. The current probe still treats the paperwork as open for examination under the warrant.
If investigators prove fraud, the government would ask a federal judge to revoke citizenship either through a civil case or after a criminal conviction that triggers automatic revocation. Omar would then revert to her earlier immigration status and face possible removal.
For decades the government averaged about 11 denaturalization cases a year, according to a Migration Policy Institute analysis cited in the reporting. Since President Trump returned to office, the Justice Department has filed at least 163 denaturalization cases and set a goal of 250 this month. The Omar inquiry fits that broader revival of the tool.
The same expanding effort includes the DOJ subpoenas of Ilhan Omar’s relatives as agents dig into the immigration file. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in September that if the government could prove she “shouldn’t have been here in the first place,” it would deport her.
Vice President JD Vance declared in March, without presenting evidence at the time, that Omar “definitely committed immigration fraud.” He said he and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller had discussed how the government might go after her.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office in Washington is separately examining Omar’s financial disclosures. On Oct. 13, the day after the home search, Pirro told Fox News that “if there was a crime that was committed it will be prosecuted.”
"if there was a crime that was committed it will be prosecuted."
A bipartisan Office of Congressional Conduct review earlier this year found no wrongdoing in Omar’s filings, which had vastly overstated her wealth. Pirro said that finding “doesn’t matter.” The financial track is the same one detailed when Pirro’s office probes Ilhan Omar’s financial disclosures immediately after the raid.
Border hawk Tom Homan has already confirmed an active federal criminal investigation into the congresswoman, giving the later search and subpoenas their public frame. After the Oct. 12 search, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina posted a call to “denaturalize and deport” her. That same night, at a Trump rally in Ohio, the audience chanted “deport” after the president spoke about Omar and other Somali immigrants.
Omar wrote on social media earlier this week, “I will not be silenced.” Her top spokesperson, Jacklyn Rogers, told USA TODAY the search is not legitimate law enforcement.
"This isn’t a legitimate law enforcement action. It is an authoritarian move to silence an opponent right before an election where he and his party will be rejected by Americans in historic proportions."
Omar’s office said “Trump’s push to strip her of her citizenship and deport her has no basis in the law and has no precedent.” In a separate statement the office added that the president “would love to eliminate one of the most effective progressive voices in Congress. There is no basis for this.”
House Democratic leadership, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, issued a joint statement calling the search “deeply disturbing.”
"For years, Donald Trump and far-right extremists have relentlessly targeted Congresswoman Omar with vile personal attacks and baseless accusations. Now, less than 30 days until the midterm election, his violent mass deportation machine has descended upon the home of a duly elected Member of Congress and her family."
Family members have projected calm. Omar’s husband said he has no worries after agents searched the D.C. home, a stance reported as the investigation continued.
Trump has said Omar should be thrown out of the country and has used harsh language about Somali immigrants. At the Ohio rally he described her as a complainer who “comes from a country that is a non-country” and then “complains about our Constitution.”
The warrant, the seized devices and passport, the relative subpoenas, and the dual tracks on immigration paperwork and financial disclosures are now in the open. Whether the evidence ultimately supports denaturalization remains the question investigators must answer in court, not on social media.
Citizenship is not a political shield. When the original applications raise concrete questions, the law requires the government to check the file, and every member of Congress lives under the same rules as the people they represent.
