MINNEAPOLIS — Federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar's Washington, D.C., home on Monday, and by Wednesday the anger had traveled 1,100 miles west to Minneapolis, where members of Minnesota's Somali community told Fox News Digital they viewed the raid as a direct assault on them.
Homeland Security Investigations agents carried out the search as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into Omar's immigration paperwork, according to Fox News Digital, which first reported the raid. The same outlet reported Tuesday that at least two of Omar's relatives had been subpoenaed — one confirmed as her sister, Sahra Noor — one day after agents searched the residence. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced Tuesday that her office is also examining Omar's financial disclosures regarding her and husband Tim Mynett's shared net worth.
Jamal Osman, the Somali-born vice president of the Minneapolis City Council, did not mince words when reached by Fox News Digital.
"Somalis — we all feel attacked by President Trump," Osman said of the raid's impact. "Our president has broken the law many times. ICE [is] terrorizing our community ... and we're not surprised such action has taken place."
Osman added: "We have seen the threats, the horrific language he uses against my community. It's unacceptable, and we're hoping this could stop."
A 37-year-old Minneapolis social worker who identified himself only as Abdi, declining to be interviewed on camera, went further. He told Fox News Digital he was born in Somalia.
"I feel like raiding a congresswoman — it feels like Donald Trump and his regime wanted to use their power to dehumanize and also humiliate someone that is part of the Congress," Abdi said. "It's personal. And Ilhan Omar — he doesn't treat her as a congressmember — he treats her as someone who's below him."
Abdi raised the prospect of citizenship revocation: "If they take the citizenship away from her, then I will say, 'Are we in a dictatorship?' That's using power to use against an American citizen, then maybe the thinking we have for the United States is completely different."
He continued: "We live in the United States, which is the land of the laws. I don't expect Trump or anyone in this matter to break the U.S. Constitution. There's laws. He can, of course, threaten, but there's a court process, there's due process. He can't say he's gonna deport her, he's gonna deport me, thousands of Somalis."
A 22-year-old Somali American woman, also declining to be named or filmed, told Fox News Digital she was unsurprised. "I thought it was bound to happen soon enough," she said. "They've been talking about her in a negative manner."
Omar has not been charged with a crime. She responded on X Monday: "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."
Omar claims she obtained derivative citizenship through her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, at age 17 — five years after leaving Somalia.
Separately, former federal prosecutors pushed back on claims that the Trump Justice Department violated the 60-day rule with the raid before an election, telling Fox News the rule isn't a formal ban.
The New York Post reported Tuesday that Omar's staff helped adjust her birth year from 1981 to 1982 in the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, as well as on Wikipedia and in media outlets — a change that stood during her time in Minnesota's House and for months into her congressional tenure.
What the investigation ultimately finds is not yet known. No charges have been filed, and the scope of HSI's probe into Omar's immigration pathway has not been fully disclosed. Subpoenas issued to relatives do not themselves indicate wrongdoing.
Our Take
Here's what the outrage tour out of Minneapolis actually tells you: the people doing the yelling aren't the ones under investigation. Federal agents searched a home and subpoenaed relatives as part of a citizenship and financial probe — that's called law enforcement, and it happens to Americans of every background, every day, without a city council member declaring himself personally attacked. The idea that an immigration investigation is somehow an assault on an entire ethnic community is a familiar move: wrap a politician in the identity of her constituents and dare anyone to touch her. Osman isn't defending due process — he's insisting Omar be above it. And note the tell in his own words: "we're not surprised." After a decade of the same accusations trailing Omar from the Minnesota Legislature to Congress, they're not surprised because they've heard it all before. Now a U.S. attorney is examining her financial disclosures, her own staff reportedly scrubbed her birth year across public records, and her relatives are receiving subpoenas. If there's nothing there, due process — the very process Abdi invoked — will say so. If there is? Then "it's personal" stops being a defense and starts being a confession. So here's the question every patriot should be asking: since when did investigating a sitting congresswoman become a crime — and since when did the people demanding the rule of law turn into the ones most afraid of it being applied?
