In the early hours of Monday morning, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents raided the home of Democratic Minnesota Rep. and United States citizen Ilhan Omar, as part of an investigation into the Trump administration’s sincerely-held conspiracy theory that her father somehow committed fraud while applying for asylum, and later citizenship, in the United States. Their hope is that they can somehow find something in her home to prove it, which they can then use to punish Omar and kick her out of the United States.
Maybe there is a box in her basement clearly labeled “Evidence of Dad’s Immigration Fraud,” containing an unpublished manuscript written by her father in the vein of OJ Simpson’s If I Did It!
Reportedly, this is related to the Trump administration’s belief that Omar’s now-deceased father, Nur Omar Mohamed, fraudulently obtained citizenship for himself and his family by lying on the application paperwork and claiming to have been an educator when he had actually served in the Somali military. They point to the fact that his obituary explicitly noted his military service (a thing people trying to cover up someone’s military service tend to do).
Two things can be true! He served as a colonel in the military during the Somali-Ethiopian War (1977-1978) — at a time, by the way, when serving in the military was not exactly optional, even if you had bone spurs — and after that, he was a teacher. When dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991 and the nation erupted into civil war, Nur and his family fled to a refugee camp in Kenya, where they stayed for four years until they were able to get asylum in the United States.
Other claims include that he lied on his paperwork about his name, as he’s also gone by a slightly different name; that they lied about Ilhan Omar’s age when applying, that she was 18 and not 17 as her paperwork stated (meaning she would not have been able to inherit citizenship from her father’s application); and the entirely unfounded claim that she married her own brother so that he could get citizenship here … and then return to the UK after they divorced, as people always do when they marry their sister for citizenship purposes.
Of course, they can’t actually prove that Omar was 18 when they applied, because Somalian birth records for that time are a whole mess, as the municipal buildings where they were kept did not exactly survive the massive civil war. Prior to that, it’s hardly as though they had a well-oiled machine of a records system to begin with.
Various right-wing publications have tried to accuse Omar’s father of war crimes, with literally zero proof of that beyond “war crimes happened, so he probably did some!”
It is also related, clearly, not just to the Trump Administration’s hatred of Omar in particular, but to their hatred of Muslims, Somalis — whom Trump has called “garbage” — and immigrants in general. Indeed, just three days ago Trump posted on Truth Social, clearly inciting hatred and possibly violence against Somali immigrants:
Back in May, in an interview with noted plagiarist Benny Johnson, Vice President JD Vance claimed that Omar “definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America,” and was also probably in cahoots with all of the Somalis doing fraud in Minnesota, like that one daycare that wouldn’t allow a random adult man to enter in order to inspect it one day.
I don’t recommend watching the whole thing, but please do watch the first four seconds, as it features a truly batshit AI cartoon of Vance screaming in half-English, half-Gobbledygook at a sobbing Ilhan Omar.
Want to send us money in an entirely different way? Click here or join our Patreon!
The end goal here is, of course, to denaturalize and deport Omar back to Somalia (or, given this administration, “just wherever”), which the Trump administration clearly hopes will hurt Democrats in the upcoming midterms. Barring that, they’d really just like to use Homeland Security to traumatize her and her family and throw some red meat to a base still licking the blood from their lips over Pete Hegseth’s announcement last week that he wants to publicly execute the Fort Hood Shooter.
The New York Times is of course covering this with the gravitas you’d expect them to cover an authoritarian leader terrorizing a political opponent and possibly trying to have her citizenship stripped:
Oh is that the norm that’s being broken here? The one about the 60-day window?
The raid appears to be over (at least the live feed is), and HSI has yet to announce whether or not it has been able to find evidence of any evil crimes that Omar may keep laying around her house.
Omar herself has since released a statement.
I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. 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.
Good.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Calling this place a banana republic is an insult to bananas everywhere.
John Pfaff
@johnpfaff.bsky.social
I would love, absolutely love, at least one prominent contender for the Dem POTUS nomination in 2028 to start threatening this now.
"Trump is right that lying on immigration forms is a serious offense.
Here are the people my DOJ will investigate on Day 1: Musk, Melania, etc."
Put fear in them NOW.
Kevin M. Kruse
@kevinmkruse.bsky.social
· 1h
Looking forward to the same scrutiny being impartially applied to Elon Musk and Melania Trump, whose immigration documents are much much worse than anything alleged about Omar's father
12:35 PM · Oct 12, 2026