The administration of US President Donald Trump is investigating Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar as it explores grounds to revoke her American citizenship and deport her, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
Gatekeepers News reports that the newspaper, citing US officials and people familiar with the investigation, reported that the inquiry focuses partly on how Omar obtained citizenship after arriving in the United States as a refugee from Somalia.
Investigators are examining her family’s immigration records and have issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to some of her relatives, seeking testimony before a grand jury in Minnesota, the report said.
Omar’s office dismissed the investigation as baseless in comments to the newspaper.
The probe comes days after agents of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a unit of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), searched the congresswoman’s home under a judicially authorised warrant.
The Department of Homeland Security said the search was part of an “ongoing federal investigation”.
According to reports, agents seized Omar’s passport, mobile phone, personal computers and notebooks during the search.
Omar arrived in the United States in 1995 after spending four years in a refugee camp in Kenya. She became a US citizen in 2000 and has previously denied committing immigration fraud.
The current investigation is examining allegations that Omar or her late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, altered her age in immigration documents to indicate that she was 17 rather than 18 when he applied for citizenship.
Investigators are seeking to determine whether the alleged discrepancy enabled Omar to obtain citizenship through her father instead of pursuing a separate application process.
Mohamed died in 2020, a development that could complicate efforts to establish who, if anyone, supplied inaccurate information in the immigration documents.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Homeland Security Investigations examined a similar allegation during the administration of former President Joe Biden but did not pursue it because investigators lacked evidence of fraud.
The report did not indicate that a lawsuit had been filed to revoke Omar’s citizenship.
The investigation does not automatically strip her of citizenship or authorise her deportation. Any attempt to revoke her citizenship would require legal proceedings.
Omar, who represents a district in the Minneapolis area of Minnesota, was first elected to Congress in 2018, becoming the first Somali-American to serve in the US House of Representatives.
She won re-election in 2024 with 74 per cent of the vote and is seeking another term in the November midterm elections, which will determine the balance of power in Congress for the next two years.
The prominent progressive Democrat has repeatedly faced criticism from Trump and his allies over her Somali background and immigration history.
