Federal agents seized Rep. Ilhan Omar’s passport and electronics in a Washington home search as the Justice Department builds a case that could strip her citizenship and lead to deportation.
Agents executed a search warrant at the Minnesota Democrat’s D.C. bungalow on Monday and walked out with her cellphone, notebooks, personal computers, and passport while she and her husband, Tim Mynett, were home, the New York Post reported.
The Justice Department is looking for evidence that Omar’s long-standing claim she became a U.S. citizen at 17 through her father’s 2000 naturalization is false. If investigators prove citizenship was procured by concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation, federal officials can seek to denaturalize her and move toward deportation.
That focus on how she obtained citizenship has already produced a broader immigration fraud probe led by Minnesota prosecutors, with a separate finances inquiry under way in Washington.
Omar’s office rejected the premise outright. In a Wednesday statement to the Wall Street Journal, the office said, “President Trump would love to eliminate one of the most effective progressive voices in Congress. There is no basis for this.”
"President Trump would love to eliminate one of the most effective progressive voices in Congress. There is no basis for this."
President Trump said Monday he had “nothing to do” with the probe. He called Omar a “totally crooked” politician and “a terrible person,” adding she was “just a complainer” who “comes from a country that is a non-country” and then “complains about our Constitution.”
Omar, 44, has maintained she gained citizenship as a minor when her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, naturalized in 2000. Some public records list her birth date as Oct. 4, 1981; others list the same date in 1982. If the 1981 year is accurate, she would have been of legal age in 2000 and ineligible for the benefit that flows to minor children of new citizens.
After her first election to the House, staff in spring 2019 pressed the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, and Wikipedia to record 1982 rather than 1981. In fall 2018 her campaign told the Associated Press she did not have a birth certificate because the family had been displaced by Somalia’s civil war.
The family left Somalia for Kenya in the early 1990s and reached the United States in 1995. Her father died in 2020 of complications from COVID-19. Investigators are examining whether any misrepresentation appeared on immigration paperwork tied to that naturalization path, a line of inquiry that has already produced reporting on her father’s immigration file rather than other personal matters.
Homeland Security Investigations received a tip about potential date discrepancies during the Biden administration and declined to move forward then for lack of evidence, the Journal reported Thursday. The current push is different in scale and posture.
More than a dozen grand jury subpoenas have gone to family members, including Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor. Minnesota prosecutors are leading the immigration-fraud side of the case. The office of D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is examining the finances of Omar and Mynett.
Those family subpoenas show the investigation is not limited to a single search return. They reach relatives who may hold records or knowledge about the naturalization timeline and supporting documents.
Federal defense attorney Todd Spodek stated the core rule in plain terms: “knowingly procuring naturalization unlawfully requires revocation of citizenship.”
"knowingly procuring naturalization unlawfully requires revocation of citizenship"
Spodek also sketched the timing limits. Criminal charges for alleged immigration fraud generally must be brought within 10 years; false-statement counts carry a five-year window. Civil denaturalization carries no similar statute of limitations. A member of Congress has never been denaturalized before, he noted.
Since the start of the president’s second term in January 2025, the Justice Department has filed almost 200 civil denaturalization cases. An analysis by the left-leaning group Democracy Forward found that only 20 of those matters have closed with defendants placed into deportation proceedings. The volume is high; the finish line remains demanding.
No charging document or civil complaint against Omar herself has been described as filed. The public record so far is a warrant return, family subpoenas, parallel state and federal inquiries, and an open question about whether the 1981, 1982 conflict ever appeared on the forms that created her citizenship.
The items taken Monday matter for any follow-on case. A passport is both a travel document and proof of nationality. Phones, notebooks, and personal computers can hold communications, drafts, and records that either support or undercut a citizenship narrative built over decades.
Omar’s office frames the entire effort as political payback aimed at silencing a progressive member of Congress. The investigative theory, as sources described it, is narrower: either Omar or her father concealed a material fact or willfully misrepresented information to obtain naturalization benefits she was not entitled to receive.
That distinction will decide the next phase. If the evidence stays thin, the warrant and subpoenas become a costly episode with no courtroom finish. If agents recover proof that the age or dependency claim was false when it counted, civil denaturalization becomes available without the criminal clock running out.
Earlier coverage has already linked the home search to Omar’s own past rhetoric on accountability, including her prior insistence that no one is above the law. The legal climb remains steep either way, as former prosecutors have mapped in detail when weighing citizenship challenges.
For now the facts on the ground are concrete. Agents entered a D.C. home with a warrant. They left with the congresswoman’s passport and digital devices. Minnesota and Washington prosecutors are running separate tracks. Family members have been subpoenaed. And the Justice Department is testing whether a citizenship story first told a generation ago can survive a full records check.
Citizenship is not a talking point. It is a legal status earned under rules that apply to everyone who takes the oath, or claims to have taken it through a parent. When those rules are treated as optional, the public has every right to demand the file be opened and read.
