Ilhan Omar wants voters to believe President Trump personally sent federal agents to her door.
Her allies have repeated that story into every camera that would hold still.
But one inconvenient date points to a different President entirely, and it isn’t the one Democrats keep blaming.
Agents Showed Up Holding a Judge’s Signature
Homeland Security agents searched the Washington, DC home of US Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) just weeks before the November election. The Justice Department said a judge authorized the warrant as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.
The Wall Street Journal then reported where this could end. US officials and others familiar with the probe told the paper the goal is to revoke the Congresswoman’s citizenship and, eventually, deport her.
Investigators reportedly care about one number above all others.
Omar’s late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, fled war-ravaged Somalia and brought his daughter to the United States in 1995. Investigators want to know whether he or Omar lied or gave misleading information about her age in the 1990s, listing her as 17 when she may have actually been 18.
That single year carries enormous weight. A 17-year-old would have picked up citizenship automatically right alongside her father. An 18-year-old would have needed to go through naturalization separately. Omar became a citizen in 2000.
And the age question may not be the only problem in that old file. The Daily Wire reported that Mohamed served as a colonel in the Somali Army under socialist dictator Siad Barre, and that leaving such service off immigration paperwork could raise its own set of questions.
US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who runs the federal prosecutor’s office in Washington, DC, then did something prosecutors rarely do. She announced that her office has opened “several investigations” into Omar.
Prosecutors have not charged Omar with any crime, and she denies wrongdoing.
Donald Trump Says Leave Him Out of It
Omar answered the way she always answers.
She accused President Trump of trying to “weaponize federal law enforcement,” and she declared, “I will not be silenced.” A parade of prominent Democrats rushed out to back her up.
President Trump didn’t pretend to like her. But he denied having anything to do with the investigation.
“I’ve always found her to be totally crooked, personally,” Trump said hours after the search. “But that has nothing to do with me. I think she’s a terrible person, just a complainer. She comes from a country that is a non-country. And then she comes over here and she complains about our Constitution. I think she’s a terrible person.”
Folks can debate his bedside manner all day long. But a President with a grudge doesn’t sign search warrants. Federal judges do.
And the Oval Office can’t strip anybody’s citizenship with the stroke of a pen, either. Federal law requires the Justice Department to sue in federal court and prove that a naturalized citizen lied to obtain citizenship. That means evidence, a judge, defense lawyers, and a chance to fight every single claim.
That’s a strange kind of dictatorship. It looks an awful lot like due process.
Biden’s Justice Department Got There First
Here’s the part the “weaponization” crowd would rather everybody forget.
The New York Times reported that Joe Biden’s Justice Department opened its own investigation into Omar in June 2024, examining her finances and her “interactions with a foreign citizen.” Merrick Garland ran that department. Nobody there was wearing a red hat.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that Omar’s net worth went from no more than $51,000 at the end of 2023 to upward of $30 million by the end of 2024, based on the financial disclosure she filed herself. Omar still disputes that she’s worth millions. But the form carries her own signature.
Then there’s her husband, political consultant Tim Mynett. Omar’s campaign sent roughly $2.9 million to his firm, E Street Group, and the two married in 2020. Investigators never brought charges over that spending. But the arrangement has drawn scrutiny ever since.
So the Democrat version of events goes something like this. When Biden’s prosecutors looked at Omar, it was routine law enforcement. When Trump’s prosecutors look at Omar, it’s the end of the republic.
It’s tough to keep a straight face.
And Omar herself made this harder to spin. The Daily Wire noted that she said in April she’d welcome any and all investigations into her personal history. Investigators appear to have taken her up on the offer.
A Citizenship Built on Paperwork Has to Survive the Paperwork
Denaturalization sounds exotic to most Americans. It isn’t new.
ICE has pointed to Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, whom a court ordered deported in August 2017 after a federal immigration fraud conviction and an order revoking her citizenship. The government has walked this road before, and it took a courtroom to get there.
The principle isn’t complicated. American citizenship is the most valuable thing this country hands out. Anyone who obtains it through a lie takes something that belongs to every citizen who came by it honestly.
The 1990s carry a lesson here, too. Washington pushed enormous numbers of people through the immigration system in those years, and critics have long warned that heavy volume and careful vetting rarely travel together. When officials stamp files that fast, nobody should be shocked if a few of those files deserve a second look three decades later.
Democrats will keep calling this an attack on immigrants. It isn’t. Millions of naturalized Americans told the truth on their forms and have nothing to worry about.
But watch where the left goes if this case lands in front of a judge. Plenty of Democrats already want to abolish ICE. Shielding citizenship fraud from any consequence at all would be the natural next stop, and the denaturalization process itself could become their next target.
None of this requires anybody to take President Trump’s word for anything. Or Omar’s.
It requires a birth year, a stack of 30-year-old forms, and a judge willing to read them.
Sources: Mediaite, “Investigation Into Ilhan Omar Reportedly Driven by Effort to Revoke Citizenship and Deport Her”; The Wall Street Journal; Associated Press, “The Latest: Homeland Security agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home”; Common Dreams; Bloomberg, “Pirro Says She Is Continuing to Probe Fed for Cost Overruns”; The Daily Wire, “Ilhan Omar Welcomed Investigations. Now She’s Getting What She Asked For.”; Washington Free Beacon, “Biden Admin Launched Investigation Into Ilhan Omar’s Finances and ‘Interactions With a Foreign Citizen’”; The New York Times; Arab News; Legal Insurrection; US Immigration and Customs Enforcement