The Trump administration’s targeting of Rep. Ilhan Omar reached a new level on Monday with an early-morning federal raid against the congresswoman’s residence. Now, it appears that the unusual move against a member of Congress is part of an agenda to remove Omar’s citizenship and ultimately deport her from the country.
Report: Trump administration investigation aims to strip Omar’s citizenship.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the current investigation against Rep. Omar was aimed at removing her U.S. citizenship and deporting her, according to officials within the Trump administration familiar with the matter. The investigation, which has previously been described as “criminal” in nature, is looking into actions by Omar and her now-deceased father, who brought the family to the United States as refugees when Omar was a child. The New York Post says that a recent raid of Omar’s home led to federal agents taking possession of items including Omar’s cellphone and personal computer, as well as notebooks and her passport. The investigation seeks to find evidence that Omar or her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, lied on immigration forms. The investigation appears to be an attempt to build a case that Omar’s naturalization as a U.S. citizen was fraudulent and that she should be stripped of her citizenship and deported.
The investigation specifically seems to be focused on the claim that Omar was 17 when she was naturalized by virtue of being a minor child of her father when he received his citizenship. Some records, which Omar has disputed as inaccurate, list the year of her birth as 1981 instead of 1982, which means she would have been 18 and ineligible for naturalization as a minor at the time that she was granted citizenship. Omar and her staff have sought to adjust records to reflect the 1982 birthdate, dismissing the discrepancy as a simple error in recordkeeping; like most people born in Somalia, Omar does not have a birth certificate from that country. The investigation into Omar’s citizenship has included the issuing of grand jury subpoenas to over a dozen of her relatives, including her sister Sahra Noor, the Post reported.
Trump’s attacks against political opponents, acceleration of denaturalization claims
As Blavity previously reported, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents raided Omar’s Washington, D.C., residence early Monday morning in a move that was condemned by the congresswoman and many of her Democratic colleagues as an act of intimidation and an attempt to interfere with the midterm elections that are only weeks away. The move is the latest attack against Omar, who has frequently been criticized in racist, Islamophobic and otherwise bigoted terms by President Trump and subjected to a variety of conspiracy theories by the far-right. Other targets of Trump’s ire have been accused by various federal agencies of wrongdoing, with many of the cases being legally questionable. In November 2025, a federal judge threw out charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud and former FBI Director James Comey for lying to Congress; both denied the allegations, which were seen as flimsy by experts, although Comey has since been charged with threatening Trump in a separate but similarly shaky case. Trump has also accused Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook of mortgage fraud in an ongoing attempt to remove her from her position, and the president threatened FCC “rebuke or punishment” against Meet the Press host Kristen Welker. Many are viewing the investigation against Omar as another abuse of power by the president against a political foe.
The Trump administration, as part of its hard-line crackdown against immigration, has sought to restrict and even remove citizenship for a number of people within the United States. In a narrow ruling this summer, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s attempts to restrict birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment guarantee of citizenship to individuals born within the United States. Meanwhile, the administration has stepped up denaturalization proceedings, stripping citizenship from people who immigrated to the United States based on allegations of fraud or deception in their immigration processes. Denaturalization has been rare; in the nearly 30 years between 1990 and 2018, the United States denaturalized 305 people, averaging just over 10 per year. By contrast, the Trump administration announced earlier this month that it was actively seeking to denaturalize 40 individuals in what U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche described as “the largest denaturalization effort in modern history.”
Now, it looks like the Trump administration is seeking to denaturalize and deport at least one more American citizen, this one a sitting member of Congress and frequent critic of the president. The highly unusual investigation appears to many to be just the latest instance of weaponization of the immigration and criminal justice systems under Trump.