Feds Close In on Ilhan Omar’s Citizenship Story: Search Warrant, Seized Phone, and a Birth Year That Changed

Written By TNT Staff, Posted on October 15, 2026

By TNT Staff | October 15, 2026

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). Photo: Kristie Boyd, U.S. House Office of Photography (public domain).

Federal agents have done something no one in Washington thought they would see: they searched the home of a sitting member of Congress over the question of how she became an American.

On Monday, Oct. 12, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents executed what the Justice Department called “a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice” at Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, D.C., home, as part of “an ongoing federal criminal investigation.” NBC News and the AP report that agents seized her phone. Roughly a dozen grand jury subpoenas went out the Friday before, including to members of her family. They are tied to a federal grand jury in Minnesota, according to NBC News and CBS News. NBC reports that Omar herself was not subpoenaed.

Several outlets report that the administration’s goal is denaturalization: revoking citizenship that was obtained by fraud. TNT has not confirmed that independently, and the DOJ has not said so publicly. Omar has not been charged with any crime.

What investigators are reportedly looking at

The Washington Post reported on Oct. 13 that the probe “centers on claims that she or her late father may have lied on decades-old immigration paperwork to secure legal status and eventually U.S. citizenship.” The Post also reported that DHS had declined to pursue similar allegations years ago.

No member of Congress is above the law. If the paperwork was honest, a grand jury will say so. If it wasn’t, the voters of Minnesota and the country deserve to know.

Her father: an army colonel under Siad Barre

Omar’s father, Nur Omar Mohamed, who died of COVID-19 in 2020, was more than the “teacher trainer” of her campaign biographies. Minnesota’s Sahan Journal, in a 2020 obituary built on interviews with relatives, described him as “an esteemed senior officer in the Somali National Army” who trained in the Soviet Union and led a regiment as a colonel in the 1977–78 war with Ethiopia.

That army served Mohamed Siad Barre, the general who seized power in a 1969 coup and ran Somalia as a Soviet-aligned “scientific socialist” state for most of two decades. According to the Sahan Journal, Mohamed’s military career ended in 1991 when Barre was overthrown and the country fell into civil war. The family fled to the Utange refugee camp in Kenya and arrived in the U.S. as refugees in 1995, first in Arlington, Va., and then in Minneapolis.

Nothing in the public record ties Mohamed to any crime in Somalia. Snopes has debunked earlier online claims that he was a “war criminal,” which confused him with a different Somali colonel. But serving as a senior officer of a communist dictatorship is exactly the kind of history U.S. refugee forms ask about. Whether it was disclosed is a fair question for investigators.

1981 or 1982? Why one year matters

Omar has said for years that she became a citizen as a minor through her father. “I became a citizen actually before I turned 18,” she told The Intercept in 2018. “My father became a citizen and so I got my citizenship through that process.” Her official biographies say that happened in 2000, when she was 17.

Here is the problem critics have raised. Under the law in force in 2000 (the Child Citizenship Act took effect only in February 2001), a child generally had to be under 18 to derive citizenship from a naturalizing parent. Born Oct. 4, 1982, Omar was 17 for most of 2000. Born Oct. 4, 1981, she would have turned 19 that year and been too old.

Her official birth year used to be 1981. Emails reported by the New York Post and Alpha News show that on May 17, 2019, the director of the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library wrote that “Library staff were informed by Rep. Omar’s congressional staff that her birth year was incorrect and requested that we change it to 1982.” Former congressional candidate AJ Kern says the request came two days after she posted a viral video questioning Omar’s age. The same emails show Omar’s staff were working to change the Biographical Directory of Congress as well. Both now list 1982.

Kern also obtained a September 2023 USCIS “Certificate of Nonexistence of Record” stating that the agency found no naturalization record for a “Nur Omar Mohamed.” Spellings and transliterations of Somali names vary widely, so the certificate is not proof of anything. Still, it adds to the questions.

To be clear: these are allegations. A corrected library listing does not prove which birth year is accurate. No court, agency or charging document has found that Omar falsified her birth date. Omar has denied committing immigration fraud.

Up to $9 billion: Minnesota’s fraud bill vs. Somalia’s entire economy

The Omar probe is landing in a state that has already become the national case study in welfare fraud. The headline number comes from the federal prosecutor. On Dec. 18, 2025, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota said fraud in 14 high-risk, state-run Medicaid programs could exceed $9 billion of the roughly $18 billion billed since 2018. That is a prosecutor’s estimate, not a court finding. It is still a staggering figure: about 70 percent of Somalia’s entire 2025 economy.

• Possible Medicaid fraud: $9 billion-plus across 14 programs, according to the U.S. Attorney’s estimate (Dec. 18, 2025).
• Somalia’s GDP was about $13.0 billion in 2025 and $12.0 billion in 2024, in current U.S. dollars (World Bank, via the St. Louis Fed’s FRED database). The IMF puts 2025 at $13.1 billion.
• The convicted portion: Feeding Our Future. Prosecutors say the scheme stole about $242 million in USDA child-nutrition money. Seventy-eight defendants have been charged and 68 convicted as of July 2026. Founder Aimee Bock was sentenced in May to 500 months in prison, and co-defendant Abdiaziz Shafii Farah got 28 years.
• New charges: in May 2026 the DOJ charged 15 defendants with Medicaid schemes totaling more than $90 million in intended loss. They include an alleged $46.6 million autism-therapy (EIDBI) fraud and about $15.7 million in Housing Stabilization Services fraud. These defendants are presumed innocent unless convicted. The DOJ notes that EIDBI claims went from about $600,000 in 2018 to more than $400 million by 2025.

These cases are about the specific people charged and convicted, not a whole community. The AP reports that, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, most Feeding Our Future defendants were of Somali descent. Many law-abiding Somali Minnesotans were the ones harmed. No source links Omar or her family to any of these fraud cases. But the scandals do raise a larger question about how Minnesota and Washington vet who gets in, and who gets paid. Those are questions she, as the district’s representative, has long been asked to answer.

Omar’s response

Omar called the search “an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” adding: “For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns.” Her office called it “an outrageous abuse of power” and said “the Congresswoman has done nothing wrong.”

The timing is a legitimate issue. The search came three weeks before Election Day, while more than 127,000 Minnesotans had already voted, according to CNN. CBS News reports that a magistrate judge required protocols that let Omar and her lawyers screen seized material for legislative privilege, following the 2007 Rayburn precedent.

Even so, the law doesn’t stop for the calendar. Citizenship is the foundation of the right to hold federal office. If the government has a case, it should make it in court quickly and in public. If it doesn’t, it should say so just as quickly.

TNT will update this story as court filings become public.

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Sources: DOJ statements via CNN and Newsweek (Oct. 12); NBC News, AP, CBS News (Oct. 14); Washington Post (Oct. 13); Office of Rep. Omar statement (omar.house.gov); Sahan Journal (June 20, 2020); Snopes; NY Post (Oct. 13, 2026); Alpha News; The Post & Email (USCIS letter, 2023); World Bank WDI via FRED; IMF Country Report 25/335; U.S. DOJ (May 21, 2026, and Feeding Our Future releases); Minnesota Reformer (May 21, 2026, and Dec. 18, 2025); AP.