President Donald Trump has been attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) since she first entered Congress in 2019. At various points, he’s called for Omar — a progressive lawmaker who came to the United States as a child refugee from Somalia and who is one of Trump’s most vociferous critics — to be investigated, arrested, and deported.
Now, Trump’s Justice Department is seemingly trying to make good on his threats. Last week, Omar’s Washington, DC, home was raided by federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to the Wall Street Journal, the raid was part of an investigation into her immigration paperwork with the explicit goal of denaturalizing and deporting her.
The timing alone would make the raid unusual — it’s rare for the Justice Department to take action in political cases so close to an election — and as Washington Post immigration reporter Ted Hesson explains, it also feels uncomfortably pretextual. “It’s almost as if the outcome of the investigation has been stated before anything has taken off,” he told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram.
Hesson joined Sean to talk about the long history of Trump’s attacks on Omar, what the agents might have been looking for, and whether the administration could actually undermine Omar’s citizenship or even deport her.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
What do we know about what federal agents were looking for in Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, DC, residence?
What we’ve learned through our reporting is that the investigation has looked at both her birth date and whether [Omar or her father] may have lied about it on the naturalization application.
A second piece is whether, looking at her father’s military service, she was born in Somalia and was there during the civil war and fled with her family as a young child to a refugee camp in Kenya and was there for years before they eventually came to the US as refugees.
This is the president of the United States and his administration entering a sitting representative’s home to figure out what her original birthday is. What is the motivation here, to the best of our knowledge?
For years, President Trump has criticized Rep. Omar and made unsubstantiated accusations related to immigration fraud.
There have been theories circulating on the far right — again, unsubstantiated — that she had married her brother as part of an immigration fraud scheme. President Trump himself has repeated that. And several top Trump administration officials in the last few months have said that they believe that there is fraud in her background. They’re making these statements prior to there being an investigation, prior to there being evidence put forward. And it’s almost as if the outcome of the investigation has been stated before anything has taken off.
One thing I should say is that while it does appear that they’re looking at her birthdate, when refugees come into the US, it’s extremely common that their birth records are unreliable because people are fleeing countries that are often in disarray, whether it’s due to civil war or other reasons.
Often, nations like Somalia don’t maintain accurate birth records. So it’s common that refugees who’ve left their country as children, spent time in refugee camps, and then come to the US don’t have a solid understanding of when exactly they were born. I don’t know for sure that that’s the case here, but I know that generally when you’re dealing with refugees, that is true.
I know there’s a lot we don’t know here, but investigators enter Rep. Omar’s home. Potentially they’re looking for some documents that may list her birthday. If they find some information that’s maybe contrary to official government records, what could that mean, in theory?
It’s unclear what sort of charges could be brought from this. And part of the question is, was she 17 and a child at the time of that application or was she 18?
Even if it was determined that she was not a child, I don’t believe they would be able to, say, launch a denaturalization process based on that fact alone. And even if they did attempt to do something like that, these things are not taken lightly and it’s a long involved legal process and very uncommon to pursue something like this over something as simple as this sort of paperwork discrepancy.
The president has a long history of hating on Somalia and Somali immigrants to this country.
How does this investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar fit into the president and his administration’s broader efforts to take away American citizenship?
In the past year especially, we’ve seen President Trump use really inflammatory and derogatory language to refer to Somali Americans and Somali immigrants in the US. Even for someone who frequently employs anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the president has in his past, some of the things he said went beyond even that. He does seem to have particularly targeted Somalis in the US and Somali Americans, and Rep. Omar has been part of that.
I think what’s interesting here or what could be interesting is that this case wades into different territory of taking somebody who’s a naturalized citizen, who’s been in the US for decades as a citizen, and saying, “We’re potentially going to reopen that and go back and look at your file and see, do we find anything that might be out of line?”
The idea that you could do that with someone who’s a sitting lawmaker could mean that you could potentially do that to any other person who may have applied.
Now, one thing we’ve learned is that in the case of Rep. Omar, the administration has looked at the idea, in the event that criminal charges can’t be brought, of potentially canceling her citizenship certificate. It’s almost like a fast-track way to disrupt someone’s citizenship.
It doesn’t remove it. You remain a citizen, but you lose the document that is the underlying proof of that, which could then cause problems with federal government documents, and it could even lead to immigration proceedings where the government tries to make the case that you should be deported.
How has Rep. Omar responded?
Her camp has vociferously pushed back against the allegations.
In regard to the search, they’ve actually said that there was a court-ordered guideline that should have been followed, and that involved consulting the counsel for the House of Representatives before the search happened. They said that never happened, and if it had, it would’ve given Rep. Omar perhaps time to prepare for this or some sort of legal recourse.
They’re saying that not only is this continuation of President Trump’s attack on her politically motivated, but also that the actual legal guidelines that were outlined in that search warrant were not followed.
Are other Democrats speaking up on her behalf?
Former President Barack Obama in particular is one extremely prominent person who came out and made a social media post elevating her case.
The interesting part is that President Obama does not often weigh in on public debates like this or is at least measured in the opportunities when he does. So it comes with more gravity to hear him stepping in and raising concerns about this.
I think it speaks to the fact that he thought this was very significant. And if you remember, President Trump’s political career was built on the narrative that Barack Obama was not born in the US.
I do remember, Ted.
And the hunt for his birth certificate. You can imagine that former President Obama saw a parallel here and realizes that this mirrors the sort of attacks that were made on him when he was in office.
We’ve talked about President Trump a bunch in this conversation, and he’s made no secret of his disdain for Rep. Omar and the country from which she comes. What has he explicitly said about this investigation?
He’s saying that the Justice Department is acting independently. That said, he has been extremely critical of Rep. Omar in his public statements and continues to be. And the president himself and other top officials have said that it should be investigated.
We’ve had, for months now, a sort of public encouragement of top officials and saying that they should be looking into this. So whether he’s directly liaising with them or whether they’re just reading his social posts, it may be kind of a nuanced distinction. He’s publicly saying he wants this to be pursued.