Federal investigations target Ilhan Omar’s immigration history and finances

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., said a federal raid on her Washington, D.C., home on Oct. 12 was intended to intimidate her, as investigators pursue criminal inquiries into her immigration history and a separate investigation into her campaign finances and financial disclosures.

In her first interview since the search, Omar told MS NOW’s Chris Hayes on October 21 that federal agents awakened her after she had slept for only 2 1/2 hours, “pounding on the doors.” She initially thought “something was on fire.”

“You don’t show up to somebody’s house that early in the morning unless you’re trying to freak them out,” she said.

Omar said the search lasted four to five hours and involved as many as 25 agents. She said authorities asked her to sign a document waiving constitutional protections afforded to members of Congress, but she refused, calling the request “obnoxious.”

Agents seized 17 items, including phones belonging to Omar and her youngest daughter, her husband’s notebooks, a camera and a Somali-language children’s phrase book.

“To walk away with 17 items of, like, 10 that were just notebooks and like old phones was such a bizarre, bizarre thing,” she said.

The Justice Department said the search was conducted under a judicially authorized warrant as part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation. Media reports indicate investigators are examining potential immigration fraud, false statements in immigration proceedings and conspiracy, including whether Omar or her late father misrepresented her age during the citizenship process.

Omar arrived in the United States in March 1995, aged 12, after fleeing Somalia’s civil war and spending four years in a refugee camp in Kenya. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000 at age 17.

“The people who knocked on my door, searching for papers, literally have his papers,” Omar said of her father. “They are the ones who processed us to come to the United States.”

Omar said she takes the investigation “seriously” but questioned whether prosecutors could establish a case against her. She described it as “a huge undertaking” to accuse a 12-year-old of conspiring to defraud immigration authorities. She has denied wrongdoing and said she has documents supporting her account.

NewsNation reported that federal prosecutors have issued more than 15 subpoenas, including to Omar’s relatives. A.J. Kern, a former congressional candidate who ran against Omar, raised questions about her immigration history in 2019.

Prominent attorney and Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz told NewsNation’s On Balance that the search warrant and investigative activity suggested the government may have substantial evidence.

“This is not the normal case of a judge just signing off,” Dershowitz said. “And so I suspect there’s a lot more than we now know publicly.”

Omar has not been charged with a crime. Nevertheless, Dershowitz said he hopes she is imprisoned, describing her as “a horrible, horrible human being, a horrible member of Congress, a horrible anti-American, anti-Semite, anti-Israel.” He added, “And I hope she has to go to jail. The statute of limitations may be over on some of her criminal conduct, but not on her fraud in becoming a citizen.”

Dershowitz argued that investigators would need to establish that Omar or someone acting on her behalf provided false information during the citizenship process. He also suggested that continued misrepresentation of her birth date could affect the statute of limitations.

“If she continues to lie, if she continues to give her birth date wrongly, even though she did it in the past, and the past may be beyond the statute of limitations, this may constitute what’s called a continuing crime,” he said. “And so the statute of limitations may be satisfied.”

He said Omar could face denaturalization if investigators establish that her citizenship was obtained through fraud.

“We don’t know how deep the trouble is. But at the very least, if it turns out that she lied or that her citizenship was obtained through fraud, whether it’s her fraud or her father’s fraud, she has great vulnerability to being denaturalized.”

Omar’s immigration history has faced scrutiny before. The Washington Post reported that Trump administration officials examined her records in 2019 but found insufficient evidence to open a full investigation. Omar said she learned more about that inquiry through recent reporting. The Wall Street Journal also reported that the Biden administration examined her case but declined to proceed because of insufficient evidence.

A separate federal inquiry concerns Omar’s campaign finances and financial disclosures. The investigation reportedly began in 2024, during the Biden administration. A complaint concerning discrepancies in her financial disclosures was previously dismissed by congressional ethics officials, but U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced last week that authorities outside Congress were investigating the matter.

Omar is seeking a fifth term in Congress.