Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) immigration history is once again being placed under the microscope after federal agents conducted a search of her home in Washington, D.C., with new reports revealing that subpoenas were also sent to her relatives, along with a request from her congressional staff to change the congresswoman’s birth year listed on all her public biographies.
Federal investigators issued subpoenas for the Minnesota Democrat’s sister, Sahra Noor, and one other individual in her family circle, as they continue their probe into possible immigration fraud and false statements made on her immigration paperwork. The New York Post has reported that Omar’s staff made a request with the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library in May 2019 to change her birth year from 1981 to 1982.
This discrepancy has been questioned by a former political opponent while challenging Omar’s official account of how she became a U.S. citizen. The reports come a day after Homeland Security Investigations agents searched Omar’s home. Two sources who are close to the investigation spoke with Fox News and said that the search was part of a current federal criminal investigation.
According to Fox News, Omar has repeatedly denied she or her family have participated in any sort of wrong doing concerning her immigration paperwork, claiming the investigations against her are the result of President Donald Trump using federal law enforcement against her. “I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” Omar said on X.
“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,” she added. “I will not be silenced.” The report then revealed that emails reviewed by The Post showed that Omar’s congressional staff contacted the Minnesota library months after she entered Congress to request a correction to her birth year.
“On May 17, 2019, Library staff were informed by Rep. Omar’s congressional staff that her birth year was incorrect and requested that we change it to 1982,” the library director wrote in a response to that email. And that library wasn’t the only place where the staff sought a birth year change. They also worked with Wikipedia, the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, and other sources, to correct the information.
But the original entry on the library website was not based on information from a birth certificate or other supporting documentation. In another email that was cited by the Post, the library director said the 1981 date was drawn from other reference sources “without documentation.” Bear in mind that the discrepancy does not mean that Omar falsified information on her immigration records. Neither report established that the biography change was the reason for the raid on her home.
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Omar has stated numerous times in the past that she became a citizen through her father’s naturalization in 2000, just before she turned 18. “I became a citizen actually before I turned 18,” Omar told The Intercept in September 2018. “My father became a citizen and so I got my citizenship through that process,” she went on to add.