A fierce political firestorm has erupted over a federal criminal investigation into Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, with former US President Barack Obama sounding a sharp alarm that the probe is nothing more than political retaliation for Omar’s unflinching criticism of current presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump. In a public post Sunday on X, the former two-term president argued that the full coercive power of the federal government is being deployed against a law-abiding elected official solely because she has dared to speak out against Trump, labeling the investigation “so appalling.”
The investigation, which gained public attention last week when Department of Homeland Security agents executed a search warrant at Omar’s Washington, D.C. residence, centers on inconsistencies related to Omar’s immigration history and 1995 entry to the United States. Born in Somalia, Omar relocated to the U.S. as a child with her family, and federal investigators are examining whether she misstated her age on her citizenship application. Multiple U.S. media outlets have confirmed the probe specifically questions whether the birth date listed on her naturalization paperwork deviates from her actual date of birth.
Obama laid out a key legal context in his post, noting that Omar’s father became a naturalized U.S. citizen when she was 17 years old, when she was still a legal minor, a status that automatically granted her citizenship under federal immigration law. He argued the current administration is pushing to deport Omar based entirely on an unproven claim that she was actually 18 when her father naturalized, which would disqualify her from automatic citizenship. “If this becomes the new normal,” Obama warned, “there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her – or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.”
Under U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services rules, a child born outside the U.S. automatically gains citizenship if at least one parent is a naturalized or birthright citizen, the child is under 18 years of age, holds lawful permanent resident status, and resides in the U.S. under the custody of the citizen parent.
The White House has pushed back hard against claims of political motivation, defending the investigation as a legitimate exercise of law enforcement. White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis asserted in an emailed statement to the BBC that unlike President Joe Biden, Trump has never weaponized the Department of Justice against his political opponents. “The Department is focused on restoring law and order and keeping Americans safe,” Bis said. Notably, Trump himself has repeatedly claimed that past federal criminal investigations launched against him during his 2020 re-election campaign were politically motivated efforts to undermine his candidacy.
If investigators prove Omar submitted material false statements during her naturalization process, the Justice Department could move to revoke her citizenship and initiate deportation proceedings. This is not the first time Omar has faced partisan backlash from congressional Republicans: in 2023, the GOP caucus removed Omar from the high-profile House Foreign Affairs Committee over controversial comments she made about Israel, a move that drew bipartisan criticism at the time.
Omar has long pushed back against Trump’s attacks, saying he has targeted her for years with “baseless lies and smear campaigns” and framing the current investigation as “the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation.” Trump has countered that the investigation has “nothing to do” with him, while still describing Omar as a “terrible person” and a “complainer.”
According to CBS News, the BBC’s U.S. news partner, federal agents seized Omar’s phone, personal computers, notebooks, and passport during the raid last week. Omar’s legal team has since demanded the federal government return the seized materials, arguing in a Friday legal filing that the seizure violated restrictions a judge put in place to protect Omar’s legislative work as a sitting member of Congress. The legal team also alleges that agents failed to properly notify both Omar and the House of Representatives general counsel ahead of the search, and blocked Omar from contacting her legal counsel for more than an hour after the raid began.
Along partisan lines, congressional Democrats have framed the raid as an unconstitutional attempt by the executive branch to interfere with the work of the legislative branch. Republicans, by contrast, have argued that Omar is not above the law and should face the same regulatory and investigative scrutiny as any other American.
A key unmentioned context in Obama’s Sunday post adds layers of irony to the current debate: during Obama’s first presidential campaign and throughout his two terms in office, Trump repeatedly pushed the racist “birther” conspiracy theory that falsely claimed Obama was not born in the United States and was therefore ineligible to hold the presidency. Obama ultimately was forced to release two official birth records confirming his birth in Hawaii to put the baseless claims to rest, though he did not reference this history in his recent statement about Omar.