OPINION:
On Monday, the feds showed up at the Washington home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Democrat, with a warrant.
They seized her cellphone, notebooks, personal computers and passport. Federal authorities had previously issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas to some of her relatives, digging into family records, documents and testimony.
Several questions need to be answered: Is Ms. Omar a naturalized citizen and therefore eligible to hold public office? Did she commit immigration fraud to obtain her status? Are she and her family profiting off her public position?
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In terms of her immigration status, U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh, a registered Democrat and Hillary Clinton donor, reportedly found enough probable cause to issue the warrant to raid her home. One can hardly claim that this is a partisan witch hunt.
The Biden administration opened an investigation into Ms. Omar in 2024, focusing on her finances, campaign spending and interactions with a foreign citizen.
Questions have also emerged surrounding her family’s entry into the United States. Ms. Omar’s father, Nur Omar Mohamed, allegedly misstated key details on his U.S. asylum application.
While her family reported fleeing conflict in Somalia, public records and biographical accounts indicate her father served as a colonel in the Somali National Army under President Siad Barre, whose regime was implicated in documented human rights atrocities, including the Isaaq genocide.
If Mohamed failed to disclose his military service under the Barre regime on his asylum filings, both he and his daughter may have entered the country under fraudulent pretenses.
Even if Ms. Omar’s father did disclose his ties to the Barre regime, there is trouble with Ms. Omar’s claim that she derived her naturalized citizenship from her father. To qualify for “derived” citizenship, one must be a minor: 17 or younger.
Ms. Omar claims that she was naturalized in 2000 at age 17, but questions have been raised regarding her birth date. Public records in the Minnesota state legislature show her birth date as Oct. 4, 1981, which would have made her 18 at the time of her naturalization — and thereby ineligible.
After she was elected to Congress, Ms. Omar reportedly directed her staff to revise her birth date in public records from 1981 to 1982. If she knowingly lied about her age, then her naturalization is fraudulent.
Lastly — and oddly enough — the Department of Homeland Security has no record of Ms. Omar’s father’s naturalization paperwork, leading to the question of whether he was ever naturalized at all. If he was not, then Ms. Omar could not legally derive naturalized citizenship from him.
Next are her and her family’s personal finances, which the Justice Department has confirmed it is investigating. In her financial disclosures to Congress, Ms. Omar claimed that a $30 million filing discrepancy was just a “paperwork error.”
In April of this year, Ms. Omar amended her financial disclosure forms, which had listed her husband’s business holdings as worth up to $30 million, an increase from a valuation of up to $51,000 in previous filings. Though the Office of Congressional Conduct board voted 5-1 to recommend dismissing allegations of intentional false reporting, finding no “substantial reason to believe” a violation occurred, Ms. Omar maintained the discrepancy was simply an accountant’s mistake.
Her sister surely seems to be. The Daily Wire links Ms. Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor, to central figures in the largest public theft scandal in Minnesota’s history. Ms. Noor runs a consulting firm, Grit Partners Consulting, which claims to have helped clients secure more than $20 million in funding for health initiatives in the Minneapolis area and has consulted on projects backed by federal health agencies such as USAID and the CDC. Ms. Noor has not been charged in connection with the fraud.
Ms. Noor’s Grit Partners Consulting was “incorporated at a home on Hyacinth Way in Lakeville, Minnesota. That address, and the woman who lives there, are linchpins tying together at least three Feeding Our Future convicts, The Daily Wire found.”
Feeding Our Future was the Minnesota-based nonprofit at the center of a $250 million pandemic-era federal nutrition fraud scheme administered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2020, Ms. Omar introduced and passed the MEALS Act, which granted nationwide USDA waivers loosening administrative and site-monitoring requirements, allowing nonprofits such as Feeding Our Future to rapidly expand enrollment in federal nutrition programs during the acute pandemic period.
Ms. Omar also received political donations from individuals linked to businesses involved in the Feeding Our Future scandal. She has flatly denied any personal knowledge of, or involvement in, the fraud scheme.
Ms. Omar remains defiant. Her campaign is fundraising off the federal raid of her home, calling on donors to “Stand with Ilhan Omar. Donald Trump and DHS have opened a baseless, partisan investigation into Ilhan Omar, and she needs us by her side as they escalate their attacks.”
In public statements, Ms. Omar says that she is “not worried” about being deported and does not “know why this is such a scary threat. I am grown, I can live wherever I want!”
No, Ms. Omar — no, you cannot. If you and your family lied about your father’s asylum claims, your father’s naturalization and your own derived naturalization, then you are not a U.S. citizen. You may not live here legally, let alone represent Americans in Congress.
The feds are closing in. If the allegations are true, Ms. Omar deserves a one-way ticket back to Mogadishu, Somalia.
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
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