Rep. Ilhan Omar. (Official congressional portrait — public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
The federal investigation of Rep. Ilhan Omar has entered extraordinary territory: sources now tell Reuters the probe could aim to strip the sitting congresswoman of her U.S. citizenship and deport her — less than three weeks before she faces voters.
The story broke Monday, Oct. 12, when agents from Homeland Security Investigations — the investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — executed a predawn search at Omar's Washington-area home and carried out boxes of materials. The Department of Justice confirmed agents had "executed a judicially authorized search warrant" at the residence as "part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation."
According to three people familiar with the case who spoke to Reuters this week, the raid stemmed from an expanding investigation into Omar's decades-old immigration paperwork. The probe centers on whether the Somali-born Omar, who has represented a Minnesota district in Congress since 2019, or her relatives gave false information when entering the U.S. as refugees in the mid-1990s or during the process of becoming American citizens. The sealed warrant for Monday's search listed conspiracy, false statements on immigration paperwork, and immigration fraud as potential crimes, one source said. The DOJ has also subpoenaed some of her relatives, and her phone was seized during the raid.
One person familiar with the investigation told Reuters that a potential aim is denaturalization — revoking citizenship acquired after birth — and deportation. Both President Donald Trump and his Homeland Security chief have publicly floated those ideas. A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment on the Omar investigation specifically but said U.S. citizenship "must be obtained lawfully and honestly" and that the administration would investigate any case where the facts support denaturalization.
Omar has denied wrongdoing and framed the raid as political retaliation. "Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement," she wrote on social media, adding: "I will not be silenced." Her office said the push to strip her citizenship "has no basis in the law and has no precedent," calling it "an authoritarian move to silence an opponent right before an election."
Trump told reporters he had no involvement in the raid. But top administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, have long accused Omar — who was born in Somalia, fled the country's civil war as a child, spent time in a Kenyan refugee camp, and says she became a U.S. citizen at 17 — of immigration fraud, which she denies.
House Democratic leadership, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, called the raid "deeply disturbing." The targeting of a left-wing member of Congress whom Trump has attacked in personal terms for years has renewed concerns that the administration is using federal law enforcement against political opponents, with Omar running for re-election in an election she is widely expected to win.