Comparisons extend to Trump, Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk and Melania Trump
Arwa Mahdawi’s October 20, 2026, column in The Guardian argued that federal immigration enforcement against Rep. Ilhan Omar was selective and was being used to “stamp out dissent.” Mahdawi said the Trump administration seemed intent on stripping Omar of U.S. citizenship and deporting her, a course she described as a “terrible abuse of power.” She also wrote that the U.S. government has the right to uphold immigration laws, but that its enforcement appetite appears to vary by person.
The investigation at the center of the column concerns Omar’s immigration paperwork. The column said federal agents searched her Washington home on the previous Monday, 22 days before the November midterms in which she is seeking re-election. Agents seized her phone and reportedly issued grand jury subpoenas to some of her relatives. President Donald Trump denied any involvement in the investigation.
Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” discussed Omar’s possible deportation on Fox News over the weekend. He said, “Certainly, if the evidence points that way, that could happen.” Homan added that officials would let the evidence guide them and that Omar would face the same standard as other people: if she violated the law, she would be held accountable.
Mahdawi used other cases involving Trump and his supporters to support her selective-enforcement argument. She pointed to Trump megadonor Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal, who publicly joked that the brothers briefly worked in the United States without proper documentation in the 1990s. Elon Musk described that period as a “grey area.”
Mahdawi also cited a 2016 Associated Press report that Melania Trump was paid for 10 modeling jobs in the United States before she had legal permission to work in the country. Melania Trump has denied ever violating the terms of her immigration status.
Separately, Mahdawi contrasted Homan’s accountability remarks with President Trump’s record. She noted that Trump was convicted of 34 felonies and received no jail time. Mahdawi attributed his position in the White House rather than prison to a conservative Supreme Court majority that Trump helped create, which she said had found that former presidents are entitled to a degree of immunity from criminal prosecution.
Mahdawi also placed the investigation within Trump’s long-running attacks on Omar. She wrote that although Trump has many enemies, few had been attacked as ferociously and consistently over the years as Omar. The column said Trump called her “garbage,” suggested without evidence that she married her brother and said she “should be thrown the hell out of our country.” Trump’s supporters have echoed his calls to deport Omar.
A photograph accompanying the column was captioned “Omar has been repeatedly attacked by Trump” and credited Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post/Getty Images.
Omar fled war-torn Somalia as a child and became a naturalized U.S. citizen at 17. Mahdawi described her as the first Somali American in Congress. Trump has claimed that his problem with the progressive Democratic congresswoman was that she was “unpatriotic” to the United States and “disrespectful … to Israel.” Mahdawi noted that Trump insists he is “the least racist person there is anywhere in the world” and suggested that the intensity of his hostility toward Omar being “brown and Muslim” was part of the explanation.
House Democratic leaders said the search of Omar’s home “raises serious questions about the continued corrupt weaponisation of the federal government against Donald Trump’s adversaries.” Mahdawi framed the unresolved question as whether the operation was “just” a stunt intended to embarrass and intimidate Omar before the midterms or whether she could genuinely be denaturalized and deported.
Mahdawi returned to the naturalization paperwork at the center of the investigation. She wrote that Omar was a teenager when her father completed the paperwork that led to both of them being naturalized. Mahdawi said, “I obviously have no idea if there were any errors in that.” Even so, she called the investigation “not about accountability” and described it as a terrifying abuse of power that reflected the administration’s use of the immigration system to “stamp out dissent.”
Mahdawi compared the treatment of Omar with Trump’s deportation of noncitizen student activists, which she said was intended to “crack down on pro-Palestinian speech.” She wrote that the administration was now applying that strategy to Omar, a sitting congresswoman.
Former President Barack Obama warned at the weekend: “If this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her.” Mahdawi concluded: “Indeed it won’t; Trump is just getting started.”