Feds Building Case to Strip Rep. Ilhan Omar of U.S. Citizenship, Deport Her
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is building a case that could end with a sitting member of Congress stripped of her American citizenship and deported, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing U.S. officials and people familiar with the investigation.
Federal investigators are examining whether Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) — or her late father — misrepresented her age on immigration paperwork when she became a citizen in 2000, a misrepresentation that, if proven, could become the basis for denaturalization.
The development, first reported by the Journal on October 14 and confirmed in fresh reporting by USA Today and the New York Post on October 15, dramatically escalates an already explosive federal probe of the Minnesota congresswoman.
Omar has long said she became a U.S. citizen at 17, automatically, through her father’s naturalization in 2000 after the family arrived in the United States as refugees from Somalia in 1995. But some records list her birth year as 1981 rather than 1982 — and if she was actually 19 when her father naturalized, she would not have qualified for the automatic citizenship granted to minor children.
On Monday, October 12, agents from Homeland Security Investigations searched Omar’s Washington-area home, seizing her cellphone, notebooks, personal computers, and her passport, according to the reports. The Justice Department has also issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including to Omar’s sister Sahra Noor and at least one other relative, the New York Times reported.
According to the Journal, federal authorities examined similar allegations during the Biden administration but declined to pursue them, citing insufficient evidence.
Federal law allows the government to revoke citizenship obtained through willful misrepresentation or concealment of material facts, and the Trump Justice Department has pursued denaturalization at a record pace — Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed 40 such cases were filed between August 28 and October 2 alone, calling it the largest denaturalization effort in modern history.
Criminal charges would face a difficult clock: the statute of limitations for immigration fraud is 10 years, and for false statements just five. But civil denaturalization carries no such limit — and a criminal conviction for knowingly procuring naturalization unlawfully requires revocation of citizenship.
No sitting member of Congress has ever been denaturalized.
Omar, who faces voters in less than three weeks in an election she is widely expected to win, has characterized the investigation as a politically motivated intimidation campaign. Responding to the deportation prospect, her office said: “Trump’s push to strip her of her citizenship and deport her has no basis in the law and has no precedent.”
“This isn’t a legitimate law enforcement action,” her top spokesperson Jacklyn Rogers told USA Today. “It is an authoritarian move to silence an opponent right before an election where he and his party will be rejected by Americans in historic proportions.”
Separately, prosecutors in Minnesota are examining possible immigration fraud, while the office of D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is investigating the finances of Omar and her husband, Tim Mynett. The congresswoman has denied all wrongdoing.
The question now is whether investigators can assemble evidence that a misrepresentation occurred — and whether the Justice Department is willing to take the unprecedented step of asking a court to revoke a sitting congresswoman’s citizenship.
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