Federal agents in Homeland Security Investigations jackets showed up at Rep. Ilhan Omar's home in the Washington, D.C., area around 6 a.m. Monday, carrying a search warrant signed by a federal judge.
They stayed more than four hours. When they left, they carried boxes of evidence out of the house.
The Justice Department confirmed the raid in a brief statement: "Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice. This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation."
Border czar Tom Homan put it more directly. "I can confirm that a search warrant was executed this morning, signed by a judge," he said. He declined to give details and referred questions to Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The words "signed by a judge" matter here.
Omar reacted the way you'd expect. She posted that she was "ok" and called the search "an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement." She added: "I will not be silenced."
Her argument ran into an unexpected problem: MS NOW, the network formerly known as MSNBC, which has defended Omar for years.
Appearing on the network, MS NOW legal commentator Ken Dilanian explained what it takes to get a judge to sign a warrant like this. "The Department of Homeland Security, which carried out the search, had to present evidence to a judge, suggesting that there was evidence of a crime at this location at Representative Omar's home in Washington, D.C., or at least that there was probable cause to believe that there was such evidence," he said.
Agents can't search a sitting member of Congress's home because the White House dislikes her. They have to convince a federal judge that evidence of a crime is probably inside. According to the left's favorite cable network, the government did that.
The investigation centers on Omar's immigration paperwork. According to sources familiar with the probe, investigators are examining documents her late father filled out when she was a child, and whether Omar or her father gave false information to get her citizenship.
The central question is her age. Omar says she was born October 4, 1982, which would have made her 17 when she became a U.S. citizen in 2000. That age matters, because children can get citizenship through a naturalized parent only if they're under 18. If she was 18 or older, she wouldn't have qualified that way. Omar has never produced a birth certificate. She says it was lost or destroyed during the chaos in Somalia.
One former immigration official said that a lie by Omar's father in which she took part "would wipe her out from naturalization."
The raid didn't come out of nowhere. In May, Vice President JD Vance said the administration would look into the immigration fraud allegations against Omar. In mid-September, Homan said publicly that she was under criminal investigation. He suggested she "lied or misrepresented" herself on her paperwork and said she could "absolutely" lose her citizenship if that's proven. Omar's response at the time was that DHS had never told her about any criminal investigation.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has made the administration's position clear: "If we can prove that you shouldn't have been here in the first place, we'll deport you."
A top immigration official said that if the evidence shows Omar or her father lied, the administration "could initiate a denaturalization process that would strip her of her citizenship." Denaturalization is a civil court process that revokes citizenship obtained through fraud. If it succeeds, the person is no longer an American and can be deported.
Omar has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing. The White House referred all questions to the Justice Department. President Trump, who has said Omar "should be in jail," brought her up at a rally on Saturday, two days before the raid: "How about Ilhan Omar? She comes from Somalia."
Omar, 44, has represented Minnesota's 5th District, which covers Minneapolis, since 2019. She is on the ballot November 3, and early voting in Minnesota starts this week.
She calls the investigation political. A federal judge reviewed the evidence and signed the warrant. Agents spent more than four hours in her home and left with boxes. MS NOW told its own viewers that the government had to show probable cause of a crime to get in the door.