Federal agents have searched the Washington home of Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, escalating the Trump administration’s investigation into the Somali-born representative just three weeks before she faces re-election.
Homeland Security Investigations agents carried out the search on Monday, US time. Tom Homan, the administration’s border tsar, said on Fox News that officers were executing a judicially approved warrant as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into alleged immigration fraud.
Omar, 44, and her family received asylum in the United States in the 1990s. She has represented Minneapolis in Congress since 2019.
She said on X that she was safe and accused the administration of using federal law enforcement to target political opponents.
“For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns,” she wrote. “This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.”
Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives described the search as “deeply disturbing” and questioned whether the federal government was being weaponised against President Donald Trump’s political adversaries.
They said the search had taken place less than 30 days before the midterm election and accused Trump and far-right extremists of subjecting Omar to personal attacks and unsubstantiated allegations.
Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Omar married her brother as part of an immigration scheme. She denies the allegation.
At a Republican midterm convention in Dallas last month, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said it was a fact that Omar had married her brother to bring him into the United States. Vice-President JD Vance has also said the administration believes she committed immigration fraud and that he and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller were working on a case against her.
Trump has frequently attacked Omar and Minnesota’s Somali community. At a rally in Tennessee on Saturday, he described Somalia as a place without a government or police and associated its people with “crime and squalor”.
Last week, he urged Minnesotans to “fight back” against what he called a takeover by Somali immigrants, while accusing Democratic governor Tim Walz of failing to act.
Minnesota has become a focal point for opposition to the Trump administration, particularly over immigration. It is also home to the largest Somali population in the United States, estimated in the source material at about 2 per cent of the state’s population.
