Federal agents searched the Washington, D.C., home of Representative Ilhan Omar on the morning of October 12, 2026, and seized her cellphone, her passport, her computers and her notebooks — opening the most serious legal threat ever faced by a sitting member of Congress: the loss of her American citizenship.
Homeland Security Investigations agents carried out the search under a court-authorized warrant, and the Justice Department confirmed an ongoing criminal investigation. U.S. officials have told reporters the inquiry is aimed at building a case that could lead to Omar's denaturalization — the rare civil process of stripping citizenship — and her deportation. No member of Congress has ever been denaturalized. If it can happen to her, critics warn, it can happen to any naturalized citizen.
Omar, a Minnesota Democrat and the first Somali American elected to Congress, has denied any wrongdoing. Her office calls the investigation political, and her lawyers have demanded the return of everything agents took.
The citizenship question at the center of the case
Minnesota prosecutors are leading an investigation into alleged immigration fraud surrounding Omar's naturalization. Omar says she became a U.S. citizen at 17, when her father was naturalized in 2000. Investigators are questioning that account — including whether her family misstated her age when they arrived in the United States as refugees in 1995, and whether filings by her late father contained false statements.
Omar arrived in the United States in 1995 as a 12-year-old refugee of the Somali civil war and was naturalized in 2000. She was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, on October 4, 1982.
The investigation has reached deep into her family. Investigators obtained the phone of Omar's sister, Sahra Noor, earlier this year and reviewed text messages that were used in the application for the warrant to search Omar's home. More than a dozen grand-jury subpoenas have gone to relatives and associates, according to reports. Investigators have also collected DNA evidence, according to reports, but the specific allegations it might support have not been verified in public filings.
A Justice Department filing on October 21 added a new front to the case. The motion, from the office of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro in Washington, identified the congresswoman as "Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar" and asked a judge to keep the search-warrant materials under seal. Omar answered on X: "My name has always been Ilhan Omar."
No charges — but Trump says she "could go to jail"
No criminal charges have been filed against Omar. Her lawyers, Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz, have challenged the legality of the search and demanded the return of the seized property. Omar has called the raid political intimidation and said she feels unsafe living at the address agents searched. She has said she will leave the Washington home.
President Donald Trump has escalated the attacks in public. He has said Omar "could go to jail" and has repeatedly called for her resignation from Congress. At an Iowa rally on October 22, he said, "She used a fake name to be sworn in," and added, "I assume she must immediately have to resign from Congress."
Former President Barack Obama has criticized the investigation as politically motivated, and congressional Democrats have questioned the timing of the search — weeks before the November 3 midterm elections — noting the Justice Department's longstanding norms against high-profile actions close to an election.
A second probe — and a wider denaturalization push
The citizenship investigation is not the only federal review Omar faces. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is separately examining discrepancies in Omar's financial disclosures, including matters involving Omar and her husband, Tim Mynett.
The case lands in the middle of a broader campaign. The Trump Justice Department has filed nearly 200 civil denaturalization cases since January 2025, according to the New York Post — a sharp escalation of a remedy the government has historically used only rarely.
Legal experts stress that denaturalization is difficult by design. To strip citizenship, the government must convince a court that the person obtained it through concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation at the time of naturalization — not through paperwork errors. That high bar is why no member of Congress has ever lost citizenship this way.
In the days after the raid, an altered image purporting to show Omar's mugshot circulated online. Reuters fact-checkers determined the image was edited and that Omar was not detained — her congressional office confirmed she was not arrested.
For now, Omar remains in Congress, with her phone, her passport and her computers in federal hands — and with the government building a case that could test whether American citizenship itself can be taken from a sitting lawmaker. If the government wins, it would set a precedent that no naturalized American could ignore.
Fuentes: New York Post, 15 oct 2026 (Samuel Chamberlain y Josh Christenson); Wall Street Journal; Particle.news; Reuters.