Trump Administration Seeks to Strip Ilhan Omar of Citizenship

Federal investigators are building a case to revoke Rep. Ilhan Omar's U.S. citizenship and eventually deport her, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing U.S. officials and people familiar with the investigation.

No one has filed a lawsuit to take her citizenship away, and Omar has not been charged with a crime. An investigation by itself does not revoke citizenship or authorize anyone's removal from the country. That takes a federal judge and a separate court case.

At the center of the inquiry is a single number on decades-old paperwork. Investigators are examining whether Omar or her late father altered her age to show she was 17 rather than 18 when her father applied for citizenship, which would have let her acquire citizenship through him instead of filing her own application, the Journal reported.

Prosecutors have issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to some of Omar's relatives, seeking testimony before a grand jury in Minnesota. Her office called the investigation baseless.

The reporting landed two days after Homeland Security Investigations agents searched Omar's Washington-area home before dawn on Monday. Agents blocked off the street and carried out boxes labeled "Seized Property Evidence." They took her passport, her mobile phone, personal computers and notebooks, according to people familiar with the search.

The search happened three weeks before the November 3 midterm elections. Omar, 44, is seeking a fifth term in Minnesota's 5th congressional district, which includes Minneapolis.

A birth date from 1995

Omar's father, Nur Omar Mohamed, brought her and other relatives to the United States in 1995 from a refugee camp in Kenya, and he filled out the family's immigration paperwork. She became a citizen through his naturalization in 2000. She has said for years that she was 17 at the time.

Her father died in 2020, which complicates any effort to establish who wrote what. A former top immigration official in the Justice Department said the administration's case would hinge on whether Omar herself lied about her age, rather than whether her father lied on her behalf.

The allegation is not new. It has circulated since 2019, when Omar's staff asked a Minnesota legislative library to correct her birth year from 1981 to 1982. Homeland Security Investigations officials examined a similar allegation during the Biden administration and dropped it because they lacked evidence of fraud. Prosecutors in the deputy attorney general's office and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis reopened the file in 2025.

The judge put a fence around her files

Before approving the warrant, U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh required prosecutors to build a screening process so investigators could not reach Omar's protected legislative records, CNN reported. The restriction comes from the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause, which shields members of Congress from executive-branch scrutiny of their legitimate legislative work.

That decision followed several days of back-and-forth. The Justice Department had argued it should get broad access to the documents inside the congresswoman's home and that there was little need to set anything aside. The judge told them otherwise.

Investigators are also looking at possible false statements on more recent government documents and whether the allegations could support a broader conspiracy case involving other people, according to CNN.

What taking someone's citizenship actually requires

Only a federal judge can revoke naturalized citizenship. A criminal denaturalization case carries a ten-year limit, and the clock on Omar's 2000 naturalization ran out in 2010. A civil case has no deadline, but the government has to prove with clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence that a person got citizenship illegally or by willfully lying about something that mattered. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 2017, in a criminal case, that the lie must have played a role in obtaining citizenship.

Even a loss in that court would not put Omar on a plane. She would hold a green card until a separate court ordered her removal, said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge.

The department made denaturalization a priority in June 2025. It has filed cases against at least 108 people in 2026, against an average of eleven a year from 1990 to 2017. Omar is the only name on that list with a seat in Congress.

Trump says he takes no position, then takes one

Asked Tuesday whether he wants Omar deported, President Donald Trump said he doesn't "take a position."

"I don't take a position. I think she's a terrible person. I think she's a terrible congresswoman. I don't think she loves our country at all, but I don't take a position," Trump said as he left the White House, according to ABC News. Hours after Monday's search, he had told reporters he had "nothing to do" with it, that it was "really up to the DOJ" and that he had always found her totally crooked.

That Monday night, at the Covelli Centre in Youngstown, Ohio, the crowd at his rally chanted "deport" while he talked about her. "She's a disaster. She comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military. All they do is shoot each other, and she comes into our country and she says, 'I have a constitutional right,'" Trump said, according to Fox News. He claimed without evidence that Somali immigrants cheat on everything.

Days before the search, at a rally in Tennessee, he described Omar as coming from a country of "crime and squalor" and suggested Vice President JD Vance "and our people" were investigating her. Earlier this year he posted that she should be in jail and sent back to Somalia. At a December 2025 Cabinet meeting he called Somali immigrants garbage. In February he said Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib should be institutionalized and sent back to where they came from.

Vance says he had no warning

Vance said in March that Omar had definitely committed immigration fraud, without providing evidence. In an interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson, he said he and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller had discussed how to build a case against her. "How do you go after her? How do you investigate her? How do you actually do the thing?" Vance asked. Omar's office dismissed his allegations as "fabricated and defamatory."

On Tuesday, the vice president said he was out of the loop. "I did not have advance notice that her home was being raided," he told reporters, adding that the administration tries to stay out of Justice Department investigations. He said they would look into the allegations: "If there's a real case there, we're going to follow the facts. If there's not a real case there, then we won't."

Three offices, one congresswoman, three weeks out

At least a dozen grand jury subpoenas have gone out since Friday, most of them to Omar's relatives, including her sister Sahra Noor. The subpoenas also revive a long-circulated claim that her ex-husband was her brother, an allegation no agency has ever substantiated.

On Tuesday, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro went on Fox News to say her office is examining Omar's financial disclosures as well. A nonpartisan congressional watchdog had already recommended dismissing that matter, which concerned disclosures that overstated her assets.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in September that the administration would act if investigators could prove fraud. "If we can prove it then, that you shouldn't have been here in the first place, we'll deport you," Mullin said. Rep. Nancy Mace wrote that if the fraud is proven, Omar should be denaturalized and removed from the country.

The 60-day rule

Justice Department practice has long been to avoid overt investigative steps involving candidates within about 60 days of an election. It is a policy, not a statute. The search of Omar's home came 22 days out.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Whip Katherine Clark and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar called the search "deeply disturbing" and said Trump's "violent mass deportation machine has descended upon the home of a duly elected Member of Congress and her family." Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, called the search "blatant political intimidation" 22 days before the election.

House Speaker Mike Johnson urged patience. "We have to reserve judgment and let the system play out as it does," he said on Fox News. "Maybe the timing's unfortunate for her or others, but this is the legal system, and it operates independently of the political system. So, we do our jobs, and we let the people decide."

Where it stands

The Justice Department confirmed only that Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant as part of an ongoing federal investigation, and later said the investigation is criminal in nature. It declined to give details.

Omar posted on X hours after the search. "I'm ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement," she wrote. "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." Her office called the search an outrageous abuse of power and said no president should be able to use the federal government to intimidate his political enemies.

Omar has said the attacks have brought death threats against her and her family, and has called Trump's fixation on her creepy. In September a Minnesota man was sentenced to 14 months in prison for spraying her with vinegar at a January town hall.

She was elected in 2018, the first African refugee to win a seat in Congress and one of the first two Muslim women to serve in the House. She has been a citizen for 26 years. No charges have been filed, and no civil case to revoke her citizenship has been brought. Her name is on the ballot on November 3.