Trump administration aims to strip Ilhan Omar of citizenship, WSJ says

The Trump administration is investigating Representative Ilhan Omar with the aim of revoking her United States citizenship and deporting her, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing US officials and people familiar with the inquiry.

The investigation does not by itself revoke Omar's citizenship or authorize her deportation. Stripping a naturalized citizen of citizenship requires a case in federal court, and the Journal did not report that one had been filed. Omar has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing.

Agents from Homeland Security Investigations, the criminal investigative arm of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, searched Omar's home in the Washington area on Monday morning under what the Justice Department called a judicially authorized search warrant. They took her passport, mobile phone, personal computers and notebooks, the Journal reported.

What the judge required

US Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh required prosecutors to put safeguards in place to keep investigators away from Omar's protected legislative records before he approved the search warrant, CNN reported. The decision followed several days of discussions with prosecutors, who had sought broad access to documents at the congresswoman's Washington home. The Justice Department had argued in recent weeks that little needed to be set aside.

The restriction stems from the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause, which shields members of Congress from executive branch scrutiny of their legitimate legislative work.

At issue is whether Omar or her late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, altered her age in immigration paperwork to show that she was 17 rather than 18 when he applied for citizenship. At 17 she would have acquired citizenship through his naturalization. At 18 she would have had to apply on her own.

Omar, 44, arrived in the United States in 1995 after living in a refugee camp in Kenya, having fled Somalia's civil war, and became a citizen in 2000. She has said she was 17 at the time. She has denied committing immigration fraud and has called the accusations politically motivated.

Prosecutors have issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to some of Omar's relatives, seeking testimony before a grand jury in Minnesota. At least a dozen have gone out since Friday, most of them to family members, CNN reported. One went to her sister Sahra Noor. The subpoenas revive a claim that her ex-husband was her brother, which no agency has substantiated.

The threshold for revocation

In a civil case the government must prove by clear and convincing evidence that a person obtained citizenship unlawfully, concealed material facts or made willful misrepresentations. The Supreme Court held unanimously in 2017, in a criminal case, that the misrepresentation must have played a role in obtaining citizenship.

Citizenship can be taken only by a federal judge. A criminal denaturalization case carries a ten-year limit, which in Omar's case expired in 2010, while a civil case has no deadline. Even if Omar lost her citizenship, she would hold a green card until a separate court ordered her removed, said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge.

In recent history, the Justice Department's practice has been to advise prosecutors not to take overt investigative steps against members of Congress or candidates within 60 days of an election, ABC News reported.

The department made denaturalization a priority in June 2025 and has filed cases against at least 108 people in 2026, against an average of eleven a year between 1990 and 2017.

Omar's father died in 2020, complicating efforts to establish whether she lied about her own age, which a former top immigration official in the Justice Department said the administration would hinge its case on, or whether her father lied on her behalf.

Homeland Security Investigations examined a similar allegation under President Joe Biden and did not pursue it for lack of evidence of fraud, according to the Journal. Prosecutors in the deputy attorney general's office and the US attorney's office in Minneapolis reopened the file in 2025, CNN reported.

Public statements from the administration

Trump was asked on Tuesday whether he wants Omar deported. "I don't take a position. I think she's a terrible person. I think she's a terrible congresswoman. I don't think she loves our country at all, but I don't take a position," he said as he departed the White House.

Hours after the search, Trump told reporters he had nothing to do with it and that the matter was up to the Justice Department. At a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, that night he called Omar a disaster. "She comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military, where all they do is shoot each other," he said, according to ABC News.

Vice President JD Vance said on Tuesday that he had no advance notice of the search. He said the administration tries to let the law follow the facts rather than creating facts to prosecute people it does not like, and that the administration would look into the allegations against Omar and follow the facts.

Vance said in a March podcast interview that Omar had definitely committed immigration fraud, without providing evidence. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in September that something would happen in the case. Representative Nancy Mace wrote that Omar should be denaturalized and removed from the country if the fraud is proven.

On the ballot in Minnesota

Omar is seeking a fifth term representing Minnesota's 5th congressional district in the November 3 midterms, in which Republicans are defending control of Congress. She was first elected to the House in 2018 and is the first Somali American to serve in it.

Omar's congressional office condemned the search. "No president should be able to use the power of the federal government to intimidate his political enemies," it said. Her office rejected the citizenship investigation as baseless in remarks to the Journal.

Speaker Mike Johnson said on Fox News on Tuesday that judgment should be reserved while the system plays out. "Maybe the timing's unfortunate for her or others, but this is the legal system, and it operates independently of the political system. So, we do our jobs, and we let the people decide," he said.

The theory has circulated since 2019, when Omar's staff asked a Minnesota legislative library to correct her birth year from 1981 to 1982.

What is not established

Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney in Washington, said on Fox News on Tuesday that her office is investigating Omar's financial disclosures as well, a matter a nonpartisan congressional watchdog had already recommended dismissing, the Journal reported. Those disclosures had overstated her assets.

The Justice Department confirmed that agents executed a court-authorized warrant as part of an ongoing criminal investigation and declined to give further details. Whether deportation is on the table for Omar is not clear, ABC News reported.

Earlier this year, Trump wrote in social media posts that Omar should be in jail and should be sent back to Somalia.

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. I will not be silenced.

The Justice Department has not said when the grand jury in Minnesota will hear testimony or whether prosecutors will seek charges. Any move to revoke Omar's citizenship would have to be filed as a case in federal court. Her name is on the ballot on November 3.