Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has represented Minnesota since 2018/ Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Federal agents searched the Washington home of Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar this week, launching what the US justice department described as an ongoing “federal criminal investigation”.
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A court approved the search warrant, the department said, but authorities have not disclosed what crime is being investigated.
The operation came after a series of comments by officials questioning Omar’s US citizenship, which she obtained in 2000 after arriving from Kenya.
Omar, who has represented Minnesota since 2018, called the raid “the latest escalation” in President Donald Trump’s “campaign of political intimidation”. Trump has denied involvement.
What is Omar being investigated for?
Agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) searched Omar’s home in Washington DC on 12 October while she and her husband were present.
The Wall Street Journal reported that investigators seized her mobile phone, notebooks, personal computers and passport.
“This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation,” the justice department said in a statement issued at the time.
Fox News has since reported that investigators issued more than a dozen subpoenas to members of Omar’s family.
Several US media organisations have said the inquiry is connected to Omar’s citizenship and to questions over whether she gave a false age when she entered the US in 1995.
Among the issues under review is whether the age listed on her citizenship application matched her actual date of birth.
Her marriages have also drawn scrutiny. Trump is among those who have alleged that she married her brother in order to obtain US citizenship.
Omar’s finances have been examined in connection with her current marriage to former Democratic political consultant Timothy Mynett. She has denied wrongdoing and dismissed the investigations as “complete shams”.
US Attorney Jeanine Pirro has said her office is examining Omar’s financial disclosures.
Republicans have scrutinised Omar’s immigration records before. Earlier this year, South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace unsuccessfully sought a subpoena for those records.
How did Omar obtain her citizenship?
Mynett told Fox News that Omar arrived in the US as a 12-year-old war refugee and said he had “no concerns” about the validity of her citizenship.
Born in Somalia, Omar fled with her family to a refugee camp in Kenya. She travelled to the US with her father and other relatives in 1995 and became a naturalised US citizen in 2000.
US media reports have focused on whether her father misstated her age on the application, recording her as 17 rather than 18.
Had Omar been 18 when her father applied for citizenship, she would have been required to follow a separate immigration process.
Who is Omar’s father?
After coming from Kenya, Nur Omar Mohamed first lived with his family in Washington before relocating to Minnesota. He worked as both a cabdriver and a postal worker.
Omar described him as an educator and said he died in 2020 from complications related to Covid-19.
The New York Post, citing a doctoral researcher at Oxford University, reported that Mohamed “misrepresented himself as a refugee”.
The newspaper said he had spent decades in the military and held a leadership role under the government of former Somali President Siad Barre.
Barre took power in a bloodless 1969 coup. Supporters viewed him as a pan-Africanist who backed causes including the campaign against South Africa’s racist apartheid system. His critics, however, considered him a dictator responsible for widespread human rights abuses before he was ousted in 1991.
“[Nur Omar Mohamed] was a full colonel in Siad Barre’s military regime,” historian and researcher Mohamed Haji Ingiriis told The Post. “Ilhan’s father was never an educator.”
The BBC has contacted Omar for comment.
Can Omar be deported?
The Trump administration has pursued an aggressive policy of detaining and deporting immigrants it suspects are living in the US illegally. Permanent residents and green card holders have also faced enforcement action.
Data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan research organisation, shows a rise in denaturalisation lawsuits filed by the Trump administration.
Denaturalisation refers to the revocation of US citizenship granted to someone who was not a citizen by birth. The justice department must bring a lawsuit and prove that the person materially lied during the application process.
That legal process appears to be central to the groundwork now being developed in the investigation involving Omar.
What has Omar said?
Trump has repeatedly suggested that Omar should be deported and urged her to “go back” to Somalia.
Speaking at a rally in Ohio on Monday, Trump referred to the search of Omar’s home and said: “I don’t know what they’re doing with it, but I can tell you this: she’s a disaster.”
He then made disparaging remarks about Somalis living in the US, prompting members of the crowd to chant “deport”.
After the search, Omar wrote on X: “I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.
“For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns,” she continued. “I will not be silenced.”
Trump has said the investigation has “nothing to do with me”.
The timing of the federal probe has departed from justice department precedent, which generally avoids taking action against officials seeking office so close to an election.
The raid came only weeks before the November midterm elections and drew condemnation from some of Omar’s Democratic colleagues, who said she had endured relentless “vile personal attacks and baseless accusations”.
