House Majority Whip Tom Emmer says Rep. Ilhan Omar should serve time and leave the country if a federal probe proves she lied to gain U.S. citizenship, a hard line after agents searched her D.C. home.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., told Fox News Digital that proven lies on citizenship paperwork should bring real penalties for Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., not political cover.
Emmer spoke after federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations raided Omar’s Washington, D.C., home early Monday morning and took her cellphone and other possessions under a judicially authorized search warrant.
The Minnesota Republican is the No. 3 leader in the House and the highest-ranking House lawmaker from Omar’s home state. He framed the case as accountability, not payback.
Emmer did not hedge on what should happen if investigators prove fraud.
He told Fox News Digital:
"I would say first she should probably serve time in the gray bar motel and then get the h*** out of here. She should go back to where she came from"
if the allegations are proven true.
He added a second condition in plain terms.
"If it's determined that she lied to gain citizenship, then absolutely, she should go back to the front of the line."
That is the core of his position: if the probe confirms false statements used to obtain citizenship, jail and removal should follow. He tied the outcome to evidence, not slogans.
Federal investigators are examining allegations that Omar or her father misstated her birth year on immigration paperwork so she would qualify as a minor when her father became a U.S. citizen in 2000. At that time she was believed to be 17 and would have automatically qualified with him. Recent claims say she was actually 18 and would have needed to go through the process herself. The family had fled Somalia in the late 1990s.
No conviction or final finding that she lied is reported as complete. Emmer’s call for jail and deportation is conditional on what the probe proves.
Emmer rejected the claim that the search was pure politics. A judge had to find probable cause that a federal crime had been committed before agents could move.
He put it this way:
"That judge had to determine that there was probable cause that a federal crime has been committed. And I'll tell you what, as long as it was Ilhan Omar, it was going to be scrutinized to the very detail,"
He also pointed to the decision to issue and execute the warrant after years of talk.
"So the fact that they issued the warrant in the first place and then executed it, I mean maybe after all these years, someone is finally going to hold Ilhan Omar accountable."
The Department of Justice said a judicially authorized search warrant was being acted on. Agents took a cellphone and other possessions from the D.C. home. No injuries or arrests are described as finished outcomes in the available account.
Readers following the broader file already know agents raided Omar’s home in a push that could strip citizenship and lead to deportation if fraud is established.
Omar is a member of the House group often called the “Squad,” which includes Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. She is seeking another term in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, with Election Day on Nov. 3 and the raid coming less than three weeks before voters head to the polls.
Omar answered on X after the raid and said she was unharmed. She cast the search as retaliation.
"I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. 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,"
she wrote, adding, "I will not be silenced."
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York and his top deputies issued a joint statement calling the raid "deeply disturbing and raises serious questions about the continued corrupt weaponization of the federal government against Donald Trump’s adversaries."
Emmer’s reply to that framing is the warrant itself. Probable cause had to clear a judge. The search went forward. Rumors about Omar’s background had circulated for years, he said, and the paperwork questions are now in federal hands.
Separate coverage has noted that Tom Homan confirmed an active federal criminal investigation into the Minnesota Democrat, keeping the probe in public view beyond one raid day.
Citizenship fraud cases rise or fall on documents, dates, and who signed what. The live dispute here is the birth-year claim tied to the father’s 2000 naturalization and whether Omar entered as a minor or should have filed on her own as an adult.
That is why the phone and other items matter. Investigators collect records to test the paper trail, not to stage a press event. Fox News Digital reached out to Omar’s congressional office for comment; no response appears in the report.
Legal observers watching denaturalization fights have spelled out what prosecutors must prove to strip citizenship in a fraud case, a high bar that still starts with false statements on immigration forms.
Related reporting has also described DOJ subpoenas aimed at Omar’s relatives as agents dig into the same immigration paperwork. The pattern is methodical: warrant, search, records, then findings.
Emmer’s home-state standing gives his comments extra weight in Minnesota politics. He is not a back-bench critic. He is leadership, speaking while a sitting member of Congress faces a federal search and an open citizenship question.
The sequence is simple on paper. A judge found probable cause. Agents executed the warrant. Investigators hold the phone and other seized items. Emmer says proven fraud should mean prison time and removal. Omar and Jeffries say the whole effort is a political weapon.
Those two stories cannot both be the full truth forever. Either the birth-year claim collapses under the records, or it does not. Either the warrant was grounded in evidence of a federal crime, or Democrats will keep calling it a hit job. The public interest is in the documents and the charging decision, not in the spin cycle.
Broader Justice Department work has included a record push to strip citizenship from dozens of naturalized criminals, a reminder that denaturalization is a real tool when fraud or serious crime is proven, not a theory reserved for cable arguments.
Omar remains in office and on the ballot. Emmer remains on record: if she lied to gain citizenship, the gray-bar motel comes first, then the front of the line out. Conditional language is not soft language when the condition is a proven lie on federal forms.
Citizenship is a legal status earned under rules, not a shield against the rules. When a warrant lands on a member of Congress, voters deserve the evidence tested in full, and consequences that match the proof.
