Federal agents searched Representative Ilhan Omar’s home Monday morning as part of a criminal investigation, according to the department of justice and reports in the and Fox News. A video posted by Fox showed what appeared to be law enforcement in HSI jackets at what Fox News said was Omar’s Washington DC residence. This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal investigation,” a DoJ spokesperson told the Guardian.
It was unclear what the nature of the warrant was – neither Omar’s office, DoJ, the department of homeland security nor the White House immediately responded to the Guardian’s requests for comment. Fox News reported based on unnamed sources familiar with the matter that agents were examining the immigration paperwork that the congresswoman’s father filled out when she was a child. Donald Trump and key allies have accused Omar of fraud related to her family’s immigration history, fantasizing openly about denaturalizing her and expelling her from the country.
The congresswoman has consistently denied the accusations, though Trump has repeatedly made them national news with gratuitous attacks against Omar, who along with Representative Rashida Tlaib became the United States’s first Muslim congresswoman in 2019. But even amid a presidency known for political and legal retribution against his critics, the search of Omar’s DC home just three weeks before a crucial midterm Election Day will surely lead to new accusations that Trump was using the government for his own political ends. Administration officials, and the president himself, have long hinted at a federal investigation into Omar.
It was just the latest in months of talk about investigating Omar. Trump in December accused her of having “married her brother” and said she “should be thrown the hell out of our country”, a reference to a years-old but unsubstantiated claim that Omar sought to help her ex-husband – who they allege is really her brother – obtain immigration papers via a sham marriage. Days later, his “border czar” Tom Homan said: “We’re pulling the records now,” referring to Omar, and said a fraud investigator in Homeland Security Investigations, the ICE division that historically has been tasked with investigative work, would look into the matter.
In March , Vance told rightwing media personality Benny Johnson: “We actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud” and that he had recently spoken to top Trump aide Stephen Miller about “what the remedies are”. Homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin told Johnson last month that there was an ongoing investigation and “something’s going to happen”. We feel that there may be more to this, the whole family migration, and possibly some illegal activity for them to come to the United States to begin with.
But all of us, we’re investigating.” Soon after, Homan said he could not “comment on an ongoing criminal investigation. Omar has for years denied unsubstantiated rumors from Trump and others about herself and her family, including the accusation that her ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, is in fact her brother, and that the marriage was part of an effort to earn him immigration status. Marriage fraud is a felony, though it has a five-year statute of limitations.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
