Immigration agents raid home of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar
Federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) on Monday carried out a raid on the Washington, DC, home of US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, on suspicion of immigration fraud.
The pre-dawn raid on the Somali-born lawmaker's house was first reported by Fox News Digital, and confirmed to Fox News Business by US border czar Tom Homan, who said the Department of Justice (DOJ) was also involved.
Omar has been a frequent target of US President Donald Trump since his first term in office, when she was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2018.
She became the first hijab-wearing Muslim to serve in the federal legislative branch.
Trump has repeatedly called for an investigation into whether she is a lawful citizen, and even claimed she married her own brother for immigration purposes. Omar has denied these allegations.
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"I’m ok," she wrote on X on Monday, several hours after the raid, during which HSI officers were seen carrying boxes and electronic devices out of her home.
"Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement," she added. "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. I will not be silenced."
'Their country stinks'
Federal raids are intended to collect evidence, but they are also, by nature, fear-inducing due to the element of surprise and because homes are typically turned upside down in the search for items of interest.
When Trump's own Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida was raided by the FBI in 2022 in relation to his alleged retention of critical government documents after he left office, he described being enraged, and his wife humiliated, as agents rummaged through drawers of her undergarments.
He has since repeatedly vowed revenge for the raid, which he blamed on former President Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers.
Trump also sharply escalated his rhetoric towards Somali immigrants in Minnesota over the past year, saying, "They come from hell, and they complain and do nothing but bitch. We don't want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it."
"I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, okay?" he told reporters at a December 2015 cabinet meeting.
"Somebody said, 'Oh, that’s not politically correct.' I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country."
Fox News Digital, citing unnamed sources, said Monday's raid on Omar's home stems from a criminal fraud investigation into the immigration paperwork that was filled out by her now-deceased father, decades ago, when she was a child.
It also comes less than a month before the midterm elections, when the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate are being contested. The DOJ has typically avoided such moves during this window because of the optics.
Former FBI director James Comey is still blamed today for Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump in the 2016 presidential race. He had launched an investigation into her use of a private email server 11 days before the election.
Reactions
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, noted on X that Section 212(k) of the US Immigration and Nationality Act "already creates a waiver by which immigrants who obtain status through fraud that they didn't know about can avoid consequences like losing a green card".
The government's argument, he added, "is even weaker than it already seems".
Omar came to the US as a refugee in 1995 and has been a US citizen for nearly three decades.
Democrats roundly condemned the raid.
"It is simply chilling that they are targeting political opponents this way," fellow progressive Congressman Ro Khanna of California said in a video posted on X on Monday.
"It is disturbing that they are targeting Muslim Americans and a Muslim-American woman legislator. Any decent American needs to stand up and speak out," he added.
Progressive Congressman Greg Casar of Texas pointed attention towards Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) in a post on X.
"Trump has sent ICE to arrest kids, to shoot innocent citizens, and now to raid the home of a US Congresswoman because he thinks it’ll help his party this election season," Casar wrote.
"Ilhan Omar stands up and won’t let Trump do whatever he wants to our country. It’s up to us to do the same."
Washington progressive Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal called the situation "disgusting".
Trump, she said, "has been obsessed with attacking Ilhan Omar and the entire Somali American population for years".
She called him an "authoritarian president who will stop at nothing to distract you from his deep unpopularity with the American people".
A New York Times story published on Sunday described how serving in public office in the US "is dangerous" because "a new normal of violent threats is making it worse".
It did not, however, mention Omar despite Trump's repeated threats.
Somalia remains on Trump's travel ban, as it had been during his first administration. While the Supreme Court eventually narrowed down the list of countries and allowed some exceptions, Somalia never actually came off the list during the Biden administration.
Trump also recently ended Temporary Protected Status for Somalis in the US who largely fled persecution and crippling poverty.
"Somalia - which is barely a country - they have no, they have no... anything. They just run around killing each other. There's no structure," Trump said last year.
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