The Trump administration is reportedly building a case to strip Rep. Ilhan Omar of her U.S. citizenship and potentially deport her, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.
According to Al Jazeera, investigators are examining whether Omar or her late father misrepresented her age on immigration paperwork decades ago.
The allegations center on whether Omar was listed as 17 rather than 18 when her father applied for citizenship, potentially allowing her to obtain citizenship through him.
Omar arrived in the United States in 1995 after fleeing Somalia’s civil war and spending four years in a refugee camp in Kenya. She became a U.S. citizen in 2000 and has denied committing immigration fraud.
The investigation follows a Monday (October 12) search of Omar’s Washington, D.C., home by federal agents. As BIN reported, the Department of Justice confirmed that Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a judicially authorized search warrant as part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.
Following the search, Omar described the raid in a statement as an “outrageous abuse of power” and accused President Donald Trump of weaponizing federal law enforcement against his political opponents.
She maintained that she had done nothing wrong.
Trump denied involvement in the search, telling reporters hours after the raid that he had “nothing to do” with it and that the Justice Department was in charge, according to Al Jazeera.
WSJ reported that authorities have issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to some of Omar’s relatives, seeking testimony before a federal grand jury in Minnesota.
The newspaper also reported that Homeland Security Investigations examined similar allegations during former President Joe Biden’s administration but did not proceed because investigators lacked sufficient evidence of fraud.
Omar’s office rejected the investigation in comments to WSJ, calling it baseless.
The report does not indicate that a lawsuit to revoke Omar’s citizenship has been filed. Any effort to strip her of citizenship would require legal proceedings, and the investigation itself does not change her citizenship status.
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