WASHINGTON – The Trump administration's probe into Rep. Ilhan Omar is aimed at revoking her American citizenship and deporting her if investigators can prove that she or her relatives lied to immigration authorities when she became a citizen, according to two people familiar with the matter.
It would be an extraordinary step against a sitting member of Congress, and it is unfolding less than three weeks before Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, faces voters in an election she's likely to win easily.
On Oct. 12, agents from Homeland Security Investigations – the investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – searched Omar's Washington area home, carrying boxes of materials under a warrant tied to alleged immigration fraud and false statements.
The Department of Justice has also subpoenaed some of her relatives, said one of the officials, who, like the other person, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
The progressive congresswoman, a longtime political foe of President Donald Trump, has characterized the search as part of an intimidation effort meant to "target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement."
"I will not be silenced," she wrote on social media earlier this week. Responding to the prospect, first laid out by the Wall Street Journal, of federal authorities working toward deporting the congresswoman, 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."
"This isn't a legitimate law enforcement action," Omar's top spokesperson, Jacklyn Rogers, said in a statement to USA TODAY. "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."
The Trump administration has spent the past year reviving denaturalization, a legal tool once reserved mostly for war criminals and terrorism suspects. For decades, the government averaged about 11 such cases a year, according to an analysis from the Migration Policy Institute. Since Trump returned to office, the Justice Department has filed at least 163 cases and set a goal of 250 this month. But Omar, who was born in Somalia and came to the United States as a refugee in 1995, is by far the effort’s most prominent target.
At the center of the case is a question about Omar’s age. She became a citizen in 2000, at 17, through her father’s naturalization, a route open only to children under 18. Investigators are trying to determine whether the family misstated her birth date so she would qualify, and whether her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, misrepresented his military history when he sought legal status.
The age question "seems to be the key focus now," one of the officials said.
Proving either would likely not be enough to deport her on its own. The government would first have to persuade a federal judge to revoke her citizenship, either in a civil case or through a criminal conviction, which triggers revocation automatically. Only then would she revert to her earlier immigration status and face possible removal. Her father, who would be central to any such case, died in 2020 from complications related to the coronavirus.
During an Oct. 13 interview with Fox News, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, said that her office is separately investigating Omar’s financial disclosures, adding that "if there was a crime that was committed it will be prosecuted."
Earlier this year, the bipartisan Office of Congressional Conduct, which reviews misconduct allegations against lawmakers, found no wrongdoing in Omar’s filings, which had vastly overstated her wealth. Pirro said that finding "doesn’t matter."
Questions about Omar’s background have followed her for most of her political career. A video that spread across conservative social media in 2019 claimed she had been 18, not 17, when her father applied. The theory resurfaced with reports that her staff, shortly after she arrived in Congress, asked Minnesota officials to change her birth year in public records from 1981 to 1982. Unfounded claims that she married her brother to help him immigrate to the U.S. have circulated for just as long.
Though the claims have been examined for years, by journalists and by her political opponents, no evidence has emerged to support any of them.
Still, over the past several months, officials at the highest levels of the Trump administration have embraced them publicly. In March, Vice President JD Vance declared, without evidence, that Omar "definitely committed immigration fraud," and said he and Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, had been discussing how the government might go after her. In September, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that if the government could prove she "shouldn’t have been here in the first place," it would deport her.
For nearly as long as Trump has been in politics, Omar – a Somali-born refugee, Muslim and progressive whom he has often held up as a symbol of the immigration he wants to curb – has been one of his favorite foils. He has called Somali immigrants "garbage" and said Omar should be thrown out of the country.
Some of his allies have gone further. After the Oct. 12 search at Omar's home, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina posted a call to "denaturalize and deport" her. That night, the audience at a Trump rally in Ohio chanted "deport" after he spoke about Omar and other Somali immigrants.
House Democratic leadership, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, called the search "deeply disturbing" in a joint statement.
"For years, Donald Trump and far-right extremists have relentlessly targeted Congresswoman Omar with vile personal attacks and baseless accusations," they said. "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."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Federal probe of Ilhan Omar aimed at revoking citizenship, deporting her
