Federal investigators are reportedly searching for evidence that could support an effort to revoke Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s US citizenship and remove her from the country.
Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, to a prosperous family. Her relatives first settled in the Washington, DC, suburbs before moving to Minnesota as she approached high school. She later obtained US citizenship through her father in 2000.
To strip Omar of her citizenship, the Justice Department would need to bring a federal lawsuit and demonstrate that she made a material misrepresentation during the citizenship process.
That legal question is reportedly at the center of a Homeland Security raid at the progressive Democrat’s Washington, DC, home on Monday—just three weeks before the midterm elections, in which Omar is seeking another term.
Federal agents took Omar’s cellphone, notebooks, computers and passport during the search, according to US officials and people familiar with the inquiry who spoke with the Wall Street Journal.
Investigators have also issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to several of Omar’s relatives, seeking testimony before a Minnesota grand jury, the newspaper reported.
Authorities are examining the family’s immigration records to determine whether Omar or her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, altered her age on citizenship documents to show that she was 17 rather than 18.
The distinction could be legally significant. If Omar was already 18 when her father became a naturalized citizen, she would have been treated as an adult and required to pursue immigration independently. If she was still 17, however, she could have received citizenship automatically through her father’s naturalization.
Federal investigators are reportedly seeking evidence that could enable authorities to revoke Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s US citizenship and deport her.
Homeland Security officers were reportedly seen searching the congresswoman’s Washington, DC, residence on Monday.
Agents reportedly seized Omar’s cellphone, notebooks, computers and passport while examining her citizenship status.
The Trump administration’s potential case depends on finding evidence that Omar herself misrepresented her age, rather than showing that any false statement came from her father, Leon Fresco, a former senior Justice Department immigration official under President Barack Obama, told the Journal.
A similar tip was reviewed by Homeland Security Investigations during the Biden administration. Federal officials ultimately declined to pursue the matter, saying they had found no evidence of fraud.
Omar has consistently denied wrongdoing. In September 2018, she said she became a US citizen through her father’s naturalization “before I turned 18.”
In a statement issued Wednesday, Omar’s office characterized the investigation as an attempt to intimidate and silence the congresswoman.
“President Trump would love to eliminate one of the most effective progressive voices in Congress,” her staff told the Journal, insisting that “there is no basis” for the inquiry.
The investigation follows revelations that Omar’s staff sought to amend her birth year in official Minnesota records only months after she won her congressional seat in 2018.
For years, the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library listed Omar’s birth date as October 4, 1981. Wikipedia and news organizations, including the BBC, published the same date in biographical profiles.
Emails obtained by the New York Post show that Omar’s aides asked the library in May 2019 to change the birth year to 1982.
US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Tuesday that her office is also reviewing the congresswoman’s financial disclosures.
The library’s director wrote in one message, sent days after the edit, that Omar’s team had said ‘her birth year was incorrect and requested that we change it to 1982.’
The same email claimed that her aides were lobbying Wikipedia and the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress to make the same birthdate correction.
Federal prosecutors have since served grand jury subpoenas on Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor, and at least one other relative.
Noor runs a Minneapolis-based consulting firm that says it secured ‘more than $20 million in funding for health initiatives and consulted on projects backed by’ the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, United States Agency for International Development and other groups.
As federal investigators now try to find proof that Omar lied on her citizenship application, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced that her office will be conducting a probe of the congresswoman’s financial disclosures as well.
‘We’re looking at the facts,’ Pirro told Fox News.
President Donald Trump on Monday denied having any involvement in the search on the congresswoman’s home
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Omar’s 2025 filing had listed assets of between $6 million and $30 million shared with her husband before she amended it to a far smaller range, blaming accounting errors.
The House’s own ethics watchdog had recommended dismissing allegations over the filings last month, a finding Omar’s office has pointed to in her defense.
Still, Omar has long faced allegations, including claims made to the Daily Mail by a Somali community leader, that her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Elmi was intended to help him obtain US immigration status.
Omar denies that Elmi was her brother or that the marriage was fraudulent.
When asked about the search on Monday, Donald Trump told reporters: ‘I have nothing to do with it.’
The president insisted the matter was ‘really up to the DOJ,’ while still branding Omar ‘totally crooked, personally.’