Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) said she was “ok” after federal agents raided her home, accusing President Donald Trump of escalating a decade-long “campaign of political intimidation” against her.
Omar responded on X Monday, hours after Homeland Security Investigations agents searched her Washington-area home as part of a criminal investigation, according to the Associated Press.
The Justice Department said in a statement that agents carried out a “judicially authorized search warrant” as part of “an ongoing federal criminal investigation.” It gave no other details, the AP reported.
“I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. 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,” Omar wrote.
“I will not be silenced,” she added.
“Can she ‘not be silenced’ from Somalia?” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) retorted on X in reply.
Mace wrote on X earlier Monday that Omar should be “denaturalized,” or stripped of her citizenship, and “deported home to Somalia” if fraud is proven. Omar has broadly called the allegations against her “disgusting lies,” according to an updated AP report.
Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin reported on X that a federal judge approved the warrant. Sources told the network the search was tied to “an ongoing criminal investigation into potential immigration fraud, including the immigration paperwork filed by the Somali-born Congresswoman’s late father when she was a child,” he wrote.
Criminal charges for naturalization fraud, or lying to obtain citizenship, must be brought within 10 years, while civil cases to strip someone’s citizenship have no deadline, a federal court explained in a ruling. If the investigation covers only paperwork filed by Omar’s late father, the charging deadline for a criminal case appears to have passed, though it is not clear what else investigators are examining.
The raid came about three weeks before the midterm election, even though the Justice Department has long avoided public steps against candidates close to an election, according to ABC News. Former officials described that unwritten “60-day rule” to the department’s internal watchdog, the inspector general, in 2018, ABC reported.
“This raid — carried out three weeks before an election — is an abuse of power. Plain and simple. No president should be allowed to turn federal agents on his or her political opponents,” Claire Valdez, a New York Democrat and state assemblywoman running for an open House seat, wrote on X.
Omar, who won her Aug. 11 Democratic primary with more than 80% of the vote, faces Republican John Nagel on Nov. 3.
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