Omar said she will have to move due to threats following federal raid

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said she will have to move out of her apartment in Washington, D.C., because of threats she’s received after federal agents executed a search warrant at her residence last week as part of an immigration fraud probe. 

“Obviously, I can’t continue to live there … Because our address has been public and with the death threats that I deal with, it’s no longer going to be feasible to be in that house and have my kids visiting off and on, having people track them,” she told MS NOW’s Chris Hayes in a Wednesday interview. 

The congresswoman, who also has a residence in her home state of Minnesota, told Hayes she woke up at 6 a.m. on Oct. 12 to learn federal agents had “surrounded her house” in D.C. She said the agents provided her a search warrant before going “room by room” and seizing 17 items, including her phone and other electronics. 

President Trump and his administration have claimed that Omar’s father lied about her age when she obtained U.S. citizenship in 2000 after their family emigrated from Somalia.

The Democratic lawmaker has denied these allegations and accused the Trump administration of waging a “campaign of political intimidation” against her in a social media post following the raid. 

“If you had so confidently said I’ve committed a crime, why are you not saying in the beginning … we’re going to subpoena people, we’re going to do a grand jury, we’re going to try to find evidence that would lead to an indictment? It’s just it’s all bizarre,” Omar said in the Wednesday interview.

Last week, The Washington Post reported that federal officials under the first Trump administration reviewed Omar’s immigration records in 2019 but did not find evidence of fraud. 

The president has for years attacked Omar in social media posts and speeches for her political views and background. During comments to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump slammed Omar as a “sick, very dishonest person … who hates our country.”

“I hope they treat her fairly, but she’s a very dishonest person,” he added.

The Minnesota progressive said she has received an outpouring of support from her Democratic colleagues. She also responded to former President Obama’s statement condemning the Trump administration’s investigation into her as “appalling.” 

“I think a lot of the conspiracy world that I find myself in is the conspiracy world that was created around him, and so while some people might feel reserved in some of the information that they hear from these people, I think he is acutely capable of seeing what this is,” she said. 

Omar told MS NOW on Wednesday she feels “confident” that she has done nothing wrong. 

“I am a person of enormous faith,” she said. “And I know that … if I continue to live my truth, if I continue to fight for the right things, if I continue to stand up to bullies and people who are carrying out ungodly corruption, I’m going to be OK.”