Omar says agents spent nearly five hours searching, took 17 items
Rep. Ilhan Omar described the October 12 pre-dawn federal raid on her Washington home in her first interview since the search, telling MS Now on Wednesday that 10 to 15 Homeland Security Investigations agents pounded on her door at 6 a.m. and spent nearly five hours searching her residence. The Minnesota Democrat denied allegations of immigration fraud and asserted her right to remain in Congress. “I have a legal right to be a member of Congress,” Omar told host Chris Hayes.
A photograph accompanying The Guardian’s account, credited to Tim Evans/Reuters, shows Omar speaking at a July campaign rally for Peggy Flanagan in Minneapolis.
According to Omar, agents executed a search warrant and scoured her residence room by room before taking 17 items, including several phones. “You don’t show up to somebody’s house that early in the morning unless you’re trying to freak them out,” she said. “Obviously, they’d like to see me locked up, deported and all of those things. But I think the bigger satisfaction for them would be for me to be like, ‘I’m tired of all of you and I’m going to leave.’”
President Donald Trump on Tuesday called Omar “a sick, very dishonest person who hates our country” while answering reporters’ questions at the White House. Asked whether Omar could face deportation over alleged misstatements in her immigration paperwork, Trump replied: “Well, she could be. She could also go to jail.”
Omar told Hayes that rumors accusing her of marrying her brother circulated on a Somali blog before gaining traction with rightwing conspiracy theorists in Minneapolis. The Guardian reported that those in Donald Trump’s orbit — cabinet officials and right-wing influencers alike — had promoted what it called “baseless theories” about Omar, accusing her of being in a sham marriage with her brother and fudging details of her immigration paperwork.
Omar said she believed the raid was designed to appease Trump loyalists who kept alluding to the fact that something was going to happen to her. “They kept alluding to the fact that something was going to happen to me,” Omar told Hayes. “They had to do something, I believe, to say, ‘Hey, look we raided her house.’”
The October 12 search marked an escalation of a years-long feud between Omar and Trump, who has repeatedly denigrated her character, faith and Somali heritage. It was the congresswoman’s first interview since the raid.
MSI previously reported that federal agents searched Omar’s Washington home on October 12 and that border czar Tom Homan later said she could be “of course” denaturalized and deported if the evidence supported that outcome.