The Trump administration wants to strip Rep. Ilhan Omar of her citizenship.[1][2] According to the Wall Street Journal, the case comes down to one year. Investigators are trying to show that Omar or her late father listed her as 17 instead of 18 on immigration paperwork in the 1990s, which would have let her get citizenship through him instead of applying on her own.[1][2][5]
Federal agents have searched her Washington home and taken her passport, phone, computers and notebooks.[2] Prosecutors have issued more than a dozen subpoenas, some to her siblings, seeking testimony before a grand jury in Minneapolis.[2][4] All of this is happening three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms, where she’s running for a fifth term.[2]
Immigration fraud is a real crime, and if someone lied to get citizenship, the government can act on it. People who ask whether the paperwork was honest deserve a real answer. Here is the record.
In 2019, during Trump’s first term, officials reviewed Omar’s naturalization and found no problem.[4] Under Biden, Homeland Security investigators looked at a similar claim and dropped it for lack of evidence of fraud.[2][3] Her father, who filed the application, died in 2020.[2] The family fled Somalia’s civil war, lived in a refugee camp in Kenya and arrived in the U.S. in 1995.[2] People coming from Somalia often had no birth records at all. The State Department’s own guidance said no birth certificates were available from Somalia,[8] and refugees without records were routinely given estimated birth dates, often Jan. 1.[6][7] Proving three decades later that a specific person lied on purpose about a specific birthday is close to impossible, and the government has already looked twice.
So why now? Omar has been a Trump target since she entered Congress, and she has faced years of attacks over her Somali background and immigration history.[2] She is a Black Muslim refugee who criticizes U.S. foreign policy, defends Palestinian civilians and hasn’t softened her positions under pressure. The investigation doesn’t need to win in court to hurt her. It forces her to pay lawyers, keeps her name in the news as a suspect during a campaign, and warns other members of Congress with similar backgrounds what speaking out could cost them.
The government has done this before. In the 1960s, the FBI’s COINTELPRO program went after civil rights leaders and antiwar activists. The Senate’s Church Committee later found that the program’s goal was to disrupt and discredit its targets, not to win convictions.[9] The investigation itself was the weapon.
Whatever you think of Omar, the rule has to be the same for everyone: the government needs real evidence before it uses its power to take away someone’s citizenship. If that only holds for politicians we agree with, it doesn’t really hold for anyone. Two earlier reviews found nothing; the man who filed the papers is dead, and the main thing that has changed is the political situation. That should worry anyone, whatever their party.
Sources
McCormick, Hackman & Gurman, “Ilhan Omar Investigation Aims to Build Case for Stripping Her Citizenship,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 14, 2026. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/ilhan-omar-investigation-aims-to-build-case-for-stripping-her-citizenship-6adf1edc (paywalled)
“Trump administration seeks to strip Ilhan Omar of US citizenship: WSJ,” Al Jazeera, Oct. 15, 2026. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/15/trump-administration-seeks-to-strip-ilhan-omar-of-us-citizenship-wsj
“Rep. Omar investigation focuses on birth date, citizenship papers, people familiar say,” Washington Post, Oct. 13, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/10/13/rep-omar-investigation-focuses-birthdate-citizenship-papers-people-familiar-say/
“Trump officials scrutinized Omar in 2019. They didn’t find citizenship issues,” Washington Post, Oct. 15, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/10/15/trump-officials-scrutinized-omar-2019-they-didnt-find-citizenship-issues/
“Ilhan Omar: What we know about the criminal investigation into the US congresswoman,” BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq98zpk30pd5o
“For many Somali-Americans, Happy New Year means happy birthday,” Star Tribune. https://www.startribune.com/for-many-somali-americans-happy-new-year-means-happy-birthday/566639041
“Jan. 1 a common birth date for many immigrants,” MPR News, Dec. 29, 2009. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2009/12/29/january-1-birthdays
“What’s My Age Again? The Immigrant Age Problem in the Criminal Justice System,” Minnesota Law Review. Its footnote 46 quotes the State Department’s reciprocity table for Somalia. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1295&context=mlr
U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Church Committee), Final Report, Book III, 1976. I didn’t pull a link for this one. Find the official copy on senate.gov and check the wording before you publish.
Originally published on Substack.
Comments