Federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, D.C., home on Monday after investigators reviewed a phone seized from the Minnesota Democrat’s sister and used family text messages to help secure the warrant, according to reporting by The New York Times cited by The Daily Wire.
The phone belonged to Sahra Noor, an author and health care executive, and was taken earlier this year as investigators reportedly worked to build a case against Omar for conspiracy to commit immigration fraud. Homeland Security agents then drew on messages exchanged among family members to convince a federal judge to approve the search, the Times reported.
The probe into Omar and her family dates back to former President Joe Biden’s time in office but has accelerated in recent weeks, as President Donald Trump’s administration has separately vowed to examine whether the congresswoman committed marriage fraud.
What Agents Were Looking For
According to the reporting, investigators who searched Omar’s home were seeking documents that Omar and her father filled out when they first arrived in the United States, materials that could bear on whether her citizenship is valid.
Omar has described the search as politically motivated, casting it as evidence that Trump is using the Justice Department against his critics. She has demanded that the items taken from her home be returned.
The congresswoman has long maintained that she became a U.S. citizen at age 17, when her father was naturalized in 2000. Under the law in effect at the time, as The Daily Wire previously reported, a person in her circumstances could have derived citizenship automatically through a parent’s naturalization, provided she was an unmarried permanent resident under 18 and met requirements concerning her parents’ status.
Questions About Her Age
That account has been dogged by questions about her age. Omar’s congressional staff changed the birth year listed for her from 1981 to 1982 after a political opponent raised questions about it, according to the reporting.
A further complication: a 2023 search for records proving her father’s naturalization came up empty, the New York Post reported. AJ Kern, who ran against Omar in the 2022 Democratic primary, had requested information about Omar’s father during the campaign to verify the congresswoman’s citizenship claims, and was told a year later that the records search had failed to locate proof of naturalization, the Post reported.
A Case Built on Family Messages
The detail that the warrant hinged in part on a relative’s seized phone adds a new dimension to a case that has unfolded largely out of public view until this week. The Times reporting indicates investigators treated text traffic among Omar’s family members as material substantial enough to present to a judge, rather than as incidental evidence gathered along the way.
Omar’s response has focused on motive rather than the substance of the allegations. By framing the search as retribution, she has sought to place the investigation in the broader dispute over the Trump administration’s use of federal law enforcement against political figures it has clashed with.
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security have not publicly detailed the evidence behind the warrant. The investigation remains active, and no charges against Omar have been announced in the reporting reviewed here.
What Comes Next
The documents taken from her home on Monday are now in federal hands, and Omar’s demand for their return sets up a likely legal fight over the scope of the search. Whether the citizenship records investigators sought actually exist, and what they show, is the central factual question the case appears to turn on.
For now, the public record rests on anonymous-source reporting about a sealed warrant process, a congresswoman’s insistence that she is being targeted for her politics, and a paper trail her critics say has never quite added up.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/ilhan-omar-raid-approved-after-feds-seized-sisters-phone