Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., on Wednesday described in detail for the first time the early-morning search of her home last week by federal agents, revealing in the process that she can no longer live there because of safety concerns.
In an interview with MS NOW, Omar said she and her husband were initially startled and confused by the arrival of agents with Homeland Security Investigations, who began banging on their doors and yelling at 6 a.m. Oct. 12.
“Well, I mean, you don’t show up to somebody’s house that early in the morning unless you were trying to freak them out, and, you know, it obviously did freak all of us out,” Omar said.
Federal agents searched Omar’s home as part of a criminal investigation that has alarmed Justice Department veterans who cited its proximity to the midterm elections. A person familiar with the investigation has told NBC News that the possible charges against Omar include conspiracy and making false statements in immigration paperwork.
Omar told MS NOW she had “only had 2½ hours of sleep” when the agents arrived since she had returned home from a trip in the early morning.
“It was, you know, trying to figure out, like you’re dreaming, this weird thing that’s happening,” Omar said. “But they basically, like, surrounded the house. They were pounding, pounding on the back door and the front door.”
She said she and her husband yelled down to try to communicate that they were coming downstairs momentarily as they rushed to get dressed. Omar added that one of her three children, her 20-year-old son, was also at the residence.
“I thought something was on fire. I thought something was happening to the neighbor,” Omar said, adding that she was particularly confused when she saw HSI agents at the door, since they often focus on issues like human trafficking, drugs, cybersecurity and terrorism.
“The fact that they were at my house that early in the morning, you know, was so, so bizarre,” she said. “I was like, ‘Why are you here?’”
Omar said the agents presented her with a warrant at the door after she asked to see one. They then asked her to sign a paper that would waive certain rights she has as a member of Congress, Omar said, adding that she declined to sign it.
Under the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution, members of Congress are protected from civil and criminal liability relating to their legislative acts.
Omar said in the interview that the agents took 17 items from her home, including old phones belonging to her and one of her daughters. Seizing the phone of a sitting member of Congress typically triggers a set of law enforcement protocols to ensure the Speech or Debate Clause is upheld.
The search took “four or five hours,” Omar told MS NOW.
“I don’t think I was able to call my attorney until about an hour into the search,” she said. Asked what she was doing during that time, she said, “I sat on the couch, staring at the warrant, trying to make sure that they were staying within the bounds of what the warrant allowed them to do.”
The Department of Homeland Security referred NBC News to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Omar’s account of the search.
In addition to the phones, Omar said, agents took multiple items belonging to her husband, Tim Mynett, including a camera that was passed down by his uncle, a Somali phrase book that he was using to learn the language and his notebooks.
Omar said that according to the receipt she was given after the search, she does not believe the agents took anything with her DNA. She also said she was not asked to provide a DNA sample.
Overall, Omar said, the agents “mostly conducted themselves in a decent way.”
“They did a really good job in putting everything back in its place,” Omar said. “They actually even folded some of my clothing that were not folded.”
Still, Omar criticized the federal investigation.
“The people who knocked on my door, searching for papers, literally have his papers,” Omar said, referring to the paperwork filed by her late father. “They are the ones who processed us to come to the United States.”
She said that after the search, she can no longer live at her Washington home.
“Obviously, I can’t continue to live there, because our address has been public,” Omar said. “And with the death threats that I deal with, it’s not, it’s no longer going to be feasible to be in that house and have my kids, like, visiting off and on having people track them.”
Omar rejected President Donald Trump’s insistence that he had “nothing to do” with the investigation.
“I mean, he’s got everything to do with it,” she said. “You know, this goes back to 2019 when he was screaming about the fact that, you know, I, I need to be sent back, I need to be deported.”
Omar has been a frequent target of Trump since his first term. He has called her “garbage,” accused her of fraud and called for her deportation.
Omar said she feels “confident in my truth” as she again denied the allegations against her.
“How more obvious could these people be? You know, it’s, like, you could at least have the appearance of not having this be fictitious,” Omar said. “But they’ve chosen to blatantly have every character that has been involved be someone who has expressed explicitly that they don’t want me to be in the United States.”