Homeland Security Investigations agents searched Ilhan Omar's home in the Washington, DC area early on Monday 12 October 2026 under a judicially authorised warrant obtained by the Justice Department. A Justice Department spokesperson said the search was part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation and gave no further detail. No charge has been filed against Omar, and the Department of Homeland Security referred questions to the Justice Department.

Reports citing unnamed sources say the investigation concerns Omar's immigration paperwork, which one report said her late father filled out when she was a child. Neither the Justice Department nor Homeland Security has confirmed what agents were looking for or whether anything was seized.

Omar wrote on social media that she was OK and that she "will not be silenced." She wrote that the search was an attempt to target political enemies and weaponise federal law enforcement, and that Trump had targeted her with baseless lies and smear campaigns for 10 years. A spokesperson for Omar said she had done nothing wrong and called the search an outrageous abuse of power by the Department of Homeland Security.

Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar, the three most senior House Democrats, said in a joint statement that the search was "deeply disturbing". They said it raised questions about the corrupt weaponisation of the federal government against Trump's adversaries and noted that it came less than 30 days before the 3 November midterm elections. Chuy García of Illinois said the search was the latest step in a years-long campaign against Omar, and Ro Khanna of California said the targeting of a Muslim woman legislator was chilling.

Tom Homan, the White House border adviser, said on Monday that the warrant was executed in an investigation led by the Justice Department and that he did not want to get ahead of Attorney General Todd Blanche. No Republican member of Congress had commented publicly on the search by Monday afternoon.

The officials behind the case

Todd Blanche defended Trump at his 2024 criminal trial in New York and became acting attorney general in April 2026 after Trump dismissed Pam Bondi. The Senate confirmed him as attorney general on 8 August by 50 votes to 49, and his Justice Department obtained the warrant used at Omar's home. Blanche helped set up a US$1.8 billion Trump fund to compensate people who said the government had persecuted them, then told senators he would reverse it after Republicans objected.

Markwayne Mullin, whom Trump chose as Secretary of Homeland Security in March 2026, accused Omar of marrying her brother at the Republican Party's midterm convention, a campaign event, rather than in any court filing. Agents from his department searched her home about a month later.

Tom Homan, Trump's border adviser, announced a criminal investigation of Omar on television in September and declined to say whether the government held any evidence.

James Comer, who led the Republican impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, chairs the House Oversight Committee that opened an inquiry into Omar's husband in February 2026. Kentucky Republicans urged Comer in August 2026 to seek the governorship in 2027, and he said he would decide soon. He repeated the claim that the Justice Department was investigating Omar's entire family on a pro-Trump livestream and gave no detail.

House Republicans removed Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee on 2 February 2023 by 218 votes to 211, citing her past remarks about Israel. Omar called the vote purely partisan and said she had not come to Congress to be silent.

Nancy Mace filed a resolution on 15 September 2025 to censure Omar and strip her of her committee seats over remarks about the killing of Charlie Kirk, and four Republicans joined Democrats to defeat it two days later. Mace then entered the race for governor of South Carolina. She told an interviewer on 2 June 2026 that Omar had "pledged allegiance to Somalia" and in the final days of the race called for barring anyone born outside the United States from public office. She finished fifth in the 9 June primary, behind Trump-endorsed Pamela Evette.

Brandon Gill, a Republican congressman from Texas, sent a campaign fundraising email on 11 February 2025 under the subject line "Petition: Deport Ilhan Omar" that urged supporters to help send her back to Somalia.

Kristin Robbins chaired the Minnesota House fraud committee while campaigning for governor and sought a subpoena for Omar's testimony that failed on 5 May 2026, when all three Democrats on the committee voted against it. Democrat Dave Pinto said the federal administration had shown it would pursue Omar if there were any wrongdoing. Robbins ended her campaign days later, saying it had not gained traction.

Sprayed onstage in Minneapolis

Anthony James Kazmierczak, 55, rose from his seat at a town hall at the Urban League headquarters in north Minneapolis on the evening of 27 January 2026 and sprayed Ilhan Omar with a syringe of water and apple cider vinegar. Omar was calling for the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem when he approached her. Her security detail tackled him, police booked him for third-degree assault and Omar finished the meeting.

Prosecutors charged Kazmierczak on 29 January with forcibly assaulting and intimidating a federal officer or employee, and Hennepin County added a felony count of threats of violence and a misdemeanour assault count. A witness told the FBI that Kazmierczak had said in a phone call that someone should kill Omar, and Omar told police he said something to the effect that she should die. His Facebook page had used a profile photo of Donald Trump embracing Erika Kirk and displayed a gun-range image in which the target was an armed Muslim man.

Omar wrote on X that night that she was fine and that, as a survivor, she would not let a small agitator intimidate her out of doing her work.

Trump said the next day that Omar was a fraud who "probably had herself sprayed, knowing her." He said he had not watched video of the attack and did not expect to. Days later he wrote on Truth Social that Omar and her "terrible friends from Somalia" should be in jail or sent back.

Omar told reporters that week, "Every time the president of the United States has chosen to use hateful rhetoric to talk about me and the community that I represent, my death threats skyrocket." She said she would not need government-funded protection if Trump were not in office and focused on her. Six officers guarded Omar and her family around the clock after Trump's early attacks on her.

US Capitol Police opened 14,938 threat assessment cases involving members of Congress in 2025, up from 9,474 in 2024, an increase of nearly 58 per cent and the highest figure on record.

From a Kenyan refugee camp to Congress

Omar was born in Mogadishu on 4 October 1982 and lost her mother, Fadhuma Abukar Haji Hussein, when she was two. She was eight when civil war broke out in the capital, and her family fled south to the port of Kismayo and then across the border into Kenya.

Omar wrote in her 2020 memoir, This Is What America Looks Like, that armed men stopped her and her brother during the escape and that a lie they had rehearsed about their clan did not satisfy them. In the refugee camp she watched a pregnant aunt die, the first death she had seen, and lived among hunger, orphaned children and fires that destroyed the shelters. The family spent four years in Kenya.

Her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, had trained teachers in Somalia and led the family's decision to seek refuge in the United States. They arrived in New York in 1995, when Omar was 12, and settled first in Arlington, Virginia. Omar wrote that she told her father the country did not match the America she had been shown, and that he promised they would eventually find their America.

The family later settled in Minneapolis, where her father drove a taxi and later worked for the postal service. At 14 Omar went with her grandfather to Democratic-Farmer-Labor caucus meetings as his interpreter. She became a US citizen in 2000 at the age of 17, graduated from Thomas Edison High School in 2001 and earned a degree in political science and international studies from North Dakota State University in 2011.

Omar worked as a community nutrition educator at the University of Minnesota from 2006 to 2009 and as a child nutrition outreach coordinator at the Minnesota Department of Education in 2012 and 2013. She then served as senior policy aide to Minneapolis City Council member Andrew Johnson. In August 2016 she beat Phyllis Kahn, who had held the seat for decades, in the primary for Minnesota House District 60B, which includes part of the Cedar-Riverside neighbourhood. She won the November election with almost 80 per cent of the vote, became the first legislator of Somali heritage elected anywhere in the United States and honoured her grandfather in her victory speech.

Voters in Minnesota's 5th District elected Omar to Congress on 6 November 2018 with 78 per cent of the vote, making her the first Somali-born member of Congress and the first woman of colour to represent Minnesota there. The House changed its ban on head coverings after her election, and she became the first woman to wear a hijab on the House floor. She has three children.

Nur Omar Mohamed died of COVID-19 complications in June 2020. Omar praised him in her memoir for supporting her ambitions.

Trump calls for jail or deportation

Trump shared a video on 12 April 2019 that spliced Omar's description of the 11 September attacks as "some people did something" with footage of hijacked planes striking the World Trade Center, under the caption "WE WILL NEVER FORGET!" The clip came from a speech to the Council on American-Islamic Relations in which Omar was describing how Muslims in the United States had lost civil liberties after the attacks, and the video left that context out. More than nine million people viewed it. Omar said the post was endangering lives and that she had received threats referring to it, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked Capitol Police to assess the security of Omar, her family and her staff. A man from upstate New York had been charged weeks earlier with threatening to kill her.

Trump wrote on 14 July 2019 that Omar and three other first-term Democratic congresswomen, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, should go back to the places they came from. Omar was the only one of the four born outside the United States. The House voted 240 to 187 on 16 July to condemn the posts as racist.

Trump told a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, on 17 July 2019 that Omar had made antisemitic remarks, and the crowd began chanting "Send her back!" Video shows Trump stepping back from the podium while the chant continued. He said the next day that he was not happy with the chant and disagreed with it.

Trump called Somali immigrants "garbage" near the end of a two-hour Cabinet meeting on 2 December 2025, said Somalia stank and said of Somalis that the United States did not want them. He called Omar garbage too, told Somalis to go back to where they came from and fix their country and said Omar would probably not be alive without the United States. Vice President JD Vance was reported to have banged the table in encouragement. Omar's spokeswoman Jacklyn Rogers said the congresswoman considered his obsession with her unhealthy and hoped he got help.

Trump wrote on Truth Social in January 2026 that Omar "should be in jail, or even a worse punishment, sent back to Somalia". The same post repeated the allegation that she married her brother, an allegation no government agency has substantiated.

Trump wrote on 26 January 2026, the day before the town hall attack, that the Justice Department and Congress were "looking at" Omar, citing a reported net worth of more than US$44 million. Omar wrote on X that his support was collapsing and that he was panicking, and told him to get his "goons" out of Minnesota.

Comer targets her husband's businesses

Omar's 2024 financial disclosure, filed in May 2025, valued two businesses part-owned by her husband, political consultant Tim Mynett, at a combined US$6 million to US$30 million. Court filings from February 2024 show one of them, the venture capital firm Rose Lake Capital, held US$42.44 in its bank account, and Mynett's business partner later testified that it had no assets or investments at the end of 2024. Omar filed an amended disclosure on 26 March 2026 that valued both firms at nothing and put the couple's net worth at between US$18,000 and US$95,000. Her spokeswoman Jacklyn Rogers said the amendment confirmed Omar is not a millionaire.

James Comer, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, wrote to Mynett on 5 February 2026 demanding financial records and documents on any travel by people linked to the two firms to the United Arab Emirates, Somalia and Kenya. Comer later said his committee could not investigate a sitting member because such matters belong to the House Ethics Committee, and Oversight staff referred the matter there.

Nancy Mace, a Republican representative from South Carolina, tried in January 2026 to subpoena Omar's immigration records. Members of both parties voted the subpoena down in committee.

Officials repeat the marriage allegation

Markwayne Mullin, confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security in March 2026, told conservative commentator Benny Johnson at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas on 10 September 2026 that "we know that she married her brother", though neither he nor his department has produced evidence for the claim. He said, "Something's going to happen," and raised the prospect of deporting her. Omar is a naturalised citizen, so removing her would first require a court to strip her citizenship.

Homan said in a television interview on 13 September 2026 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was conducting an ongoing criminal investigation involving Omar. Asked whether the government held evidence of immigration or naturalisation fraud, he declined to answer. Omar said no one from the department had contacted her, and she has called the marriage claims bigoted lies.

Comer said on Johnson's show, without offering evidence, that Blanche's Justice Department was investigating "the entire Omar family". Johnson had opened the exchange by calling a prosecution of Omar the single greatest of his lifetime. Comer gave no detail of any criminal case, and Justice Department announcements reviewed in September 2026 listed no charges against her.

No court has found Omar committed immigration fraud, and no government agency has released evidence that her former husband, British citizen Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, is her brother. The allegation has circulated since at least 2019, when Trump and conservative groups first demanded an inquiry.

Aimee Bock led Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota nonprofit that sponsored more than 250 child nutrition sites claiming to serve thousands of meals a day to children, often from the week they opened. Prosecutors said the network took about US$242 million in federal pandemic relief money from the US Department of Agriculture, paid out through the Minnesota Department of Education, and a further US$18 million in kickbacks from programme funds. A federal jury convicted Bock and her co-defendant Salim Said on all counts in 2025, and Judge Nancy Brasel sentenced Bock on 21 May 2026 to 500 months in prison. The investigation has produced more than 70 indictments and 66 convictions.

No indictment, plea agreement or trial filing in the case names Omar as a participant, and she has not been charged in connection with it.

The Office of the Legislative Auditor reported on 13 June 2024 that the Minnesota Department of Education's inadequate oversight of Feeding Our Future created opportunities for fraud. The auditor cited weak review of applications, little follow-up on serious findings and limited investigation of complaints, and did not find that a bill Omar introduced in March 2020 was designed to enable the fraud.

Omar's bill, the MEALS Act, relaxed federal child nutrition rules during the pandemic and became part of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. Omar said on 20 May 2026 that "any claim that I had knowledge of this scheme is flat-out false." She said the measure passed with bipartisan support, that Trump signed it into law and that his agriculture secretary set the rules for the programme's rollout. She said she wrote to the department demanding answers once the fraud became public.

Kristin Robbins, the Republican chair of a Minnesota House fraud oversight committee, said Omar had written to the administration urging it to keep the pandemic waivers in place and called her account revisionist history. The committee's final report said the MEALS Act removed safeguards from federal nutrition programmes, and Democrats on the committee blocked a subpoena for Omar's testimony. Magistrate Judge David Schultz found that the relaxed enrolment provisions left the reimbursement system vulnerable to fraud, a finding Bock attached to her appeal in August 2026. Schultz's finding concerned the programme's rules and made no allegation about Omar's conduct.

Ahmed Ghedi and Abdihakim Ahmed, two men named in FBI search-warrant affidavits in the case, each gave US$2,700 to Omar's campaign in early 2021. Her campaign gave the US$5,400 to three Minneapolis food shelves, Sabathani Community Center, Shiloh Cares Food Shelf and Division of Indian Work, after the affidavits became public. Her chief of staff, Connor McNutt, said the campaign acted out of an abundance of caution.

Prosecutors have said the full scale of fraud in Minnesota's state-administered programmes is unknown, a position at odds with the US$19 billion figure Trump has repeated.

What the administration says

A Homeland Security spokesperson said "no one, including members of Congress, are above the law," and Homan said agents were not making the allegations up. Critics of Omar's finances point out that her amended filing still reports between US$102,503 and US$1,005,200 in 2024 income from her husband's two firms, including US$213,200 distributed to him from Rose Lake Capital, while her original filing listed that firm's income as none. The National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative watchdog, has filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Conduct alleging she failed to disclose assets and liabilities tied to those businesses.