On Columbus Day, Homeland Security Investigations showed up before dawn at Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar's Washington, D.C., residence with a court-authorized search warrant. That fact does not prove Omar committed a crime, and it does not by itself answer the Democrats' charge that politics infected the investigation. It does mean the Justice Department put enough evidence before a judge to establish probable cause that evidence of a crime would be found there.
That is not nothing.
The standard should be simple: No political enemy gets convicted by press release, and no member of Congress gets sanctuary by title.
We are still short on details, which is normal at this stage. The Justice Department has confirmed only that the search was part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation. Multiple reports say the probe concerns immigration paperwork connected to Omar's family, but the government has not publicly laid out its theory or disclosed what agents were seeking.
The investigation has a long history. In September, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was an ongoing probe and claimed, “We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States.” Omar has long denied that allegation, and the government has not publicly produced evidence establishing it. Mullin also suggested investigators were looking more broadly at the family's immigration history.
Omar's finances have drawn separate scrutiny. A 2024 congressional disclosure appeared to value assets tied largely to her husband's businesses at between $6 million and $30 million. Later disclosures and corrections put the couple’s assets dramatically lower, with Omar's office blaming an “accounting error” that overstated the value of the businesses. Fox News reported revised figures between roughly $18,000 and $95,000. Quite a discrepancy.
In January, the Oversight Project flagged more than $1 million in earmarks pushed by Omar and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) for Minneapolis nonprofits whose operations raised serious questions. The money was removed from the spending bill, and Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) asked the Justice Department to investigate.
So now we wait. But whatever investigators presented was enough to get a warrant. To borrow Omar's much-debated 2019 phrase about 9/11 and the civil liberties backlash that followed, “some people did something.” Here, the Justice Department did something more concrete: It put its evidence before a court and got permission to search.
House Democrat leaders immediately called the raid “corrupt weaponization” and a “rogue abuse of power.” They are certainly free to make that case. But Trump's hostility toward Omar does not make evidence disappear. The proper test is the evidence, not the defendant's politics or job title.
I have been a tough critic of the Department of Homeland Security for failing to deliver the mass-deportation agenda voters were promised. If Monday’s search is part of a legitimate criminal case, the DHS deserves credit for pursuing it without treating a member of Congress as untouchable.
A broader political problem also extends beyond Omar: the rise of socialism. Too many elected officials increasingly treat ethnic identity and foreign attachment as competing sources of political allegiance, while attacking the institutions charged with enforcing immigration law.
RELATED: The right is building its own lawfare defense machine — finally
Arturbo/Getty Images
Take Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.). Last year, after remarks she delivered in Spanish in Mexico City, we argued that she had put Guatemalan identity ahead of American allegiance. She has now gone farther in policy terms: pushing mass amnesty and gutting enforcement. Her Reimagining Safety Act would dismantle the Department of Homeland Security and abolish ICE while moving some existing functions into a new department.
Or look at Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), who faces federal charges arising from a confrontation at the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility. She argued that congressional oversight and the Speech or Debate Clause insulated her from prosecution. In August, the Third Circuit blew that argument out of the water. McIver denies wrongdoing, but the legal theory that a member's oversight role makes ordinary criminal law disappear has already failed in court.
Republicans are not immune from this politics either. Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) recently released an ad attacking Trump's immigration enforcement as having “gone too far” and warned that Hispanic voters who backed him in 2024 “feel betrayed.” It is yet another example of a politician speaking as representatives of an ethnic voting bloc first and as advocates of a uniform immigration law second.
RELATED: The mass-deportation promise is disappearing
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/Getty Images
Congress should respond to this problem carefully, not with ticky-tack retaliation over political speech. Disagreeing with America's immigration laws, criticizing ICE, or invoking an ethnic heritage are not crimes. Declaring allegiance to a foreign country and flagrantly violating constitutional oaths is another matter.
That is why Monday's search should be treated neither as a conviction nor as a meaningless political stunt. A warrant is not a verdict. If the investigation ultimately produces evidence that Omar committed immigration fraud, made material false statements, or engaged in other serious criminal conduct, Congress should act under its own rules rather than hide behind the slow pace of criminal litigation.
Committee assignments and access to sensitive government information are privileges Congress controls. Due process does not require institutional paralysis. The standard should be simple: No political enemy gets convicted by press release, and no member of Congress gets sanctuary by title.