It was still dark when they came. Around 4 or 5 in the morning on Monday, neighbors on a quiet residential street in the Washington, D.C. area heard loud banging on the door of Representative Ilhan Omar, followed by a man shouting, “Open the door, open the door.” Federal agents in jackets marked Homeland Security Investigations were photographed outside the home of the Minnesota congresswoman as they carried boxes out to government vehicles, one of them white and marked with a pink X.
The Justice Department confirmed the search a few hours later. “Today in the Washington, D.C. area, Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal investigation.”
The investigation is a criminal probe of alleged immigration fraud — specifically, immigration paperwork filed when Omar was still a child. The paperwork, officials say, was completed and submitted by her late father, who brought her to the United States as a child refugee fleeing the civil war in Somalia. Omar, 44, became a U.S. citizen in 2000 at the age of 17 and was first elected to Congress in 2018 to represent Minnesota’s 5th District, which includes all of Minneapolis.
Homeland Security Investigations is the investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — the same agency whose actions have dominated headlines for weeks. Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, told Fox Business Network that the Justice Department is leading the investigation with the Department of Homeland Security in a supporting role. Homan declined to discuss specifics of what he described as an ongoing criminal investigation.
Omar has denied wrongdoing repeatedly and says the accusations are false and politically motivated. She did not waste time responding to the raid.
“I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” she wrote on X later Monday morning. “For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation.” She ended the statement with a vow: “I will not be silenced.”
Few congresswomen in American history have drawn as much of Donald Trump’s personal attention. The Somali-born lawmaker, an outspoken progressive and one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, has been a fixture of his speeches for years. In February, he said Omar and fellow Democrat Rashida Tlaib of Michigan should be “institutionalised” after they criticized his remarks during the State of the Union address. More recently, he has aimed a burst of anti-Somali and anti-Muslim rhetoric at Minnesota’s Somali American community, casting it as a threat to the state.
The timing is what has turned a search warrant into a political earthquake. The raid landed a little more than three weeks before the November 3 midterm elections, with Trump’s party defending narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress. Omar, who is seeking another term, represents a safely Democratic district — she won reelection in 2024 by a margin of 50 percentage points — so the search will not decide her seat. But House Democratic leadership, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, called the raid “deeply disturbing” in a joint statement, accusing the administration of turning its enforcement machinery on a sitting member of Congress.
“For years, Donald Trump and far-right extremists have relentlessly targeted Congresswoman Omar with vile personal attacks and baseless accusations,” the Democratic leaders said. “Now, less than 30 days until the midterm election, his violent mass deportation machine has descended upon the home of a duly elected Member of Congress and her family.”
Top administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, have long accused Omar of immigration fraud — accusations she denies. Whether the search produces charges or quietly fizzles will determine how history reads this morning’s raid: as a legitimate fraud investigation or as the most dramatic example yet of a presidency turning federal law enforcement on its critics.
3 Comments