Federal investigators building an immigration fraud case against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) just got a major break, and it came from her own family's text messages.
According to a report from the New York Times, messages pulled from a phone seized from Omar's sister gave investigators what they needed to get inside the congresswoman's home. The paper laid out the details this week, citing three people familiar with the matter.
Federal investigators have been reviewing family text messages as they aim to build a case implicating Representative Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, of conspiring to commit immigration fraud, three people familiar with the matter said this week.
The messages were obtained from a phone that officials seized earlier this year from one of Ms. Omar’s sisters, Sahra Noor, a health care executive and author, according to the three people.
The messages contained information that investigators had used to get a federal judge to authorize homeland security agents to search Ms. Omar’s Washington-area residence on Monday, the three people said. Agents spent hours searching the home of the congresswoman and were seen walking away with several boxes of seized items.
Agents seized Omar's phone, her computer, and her passport during Monday's search. Federal agents also went through her trash looking for DNA evidence. Investigators don't comb through a sitting congresswoman's garbage on a hunch.
The sister at the center of this is Sahra Noor, a health care executive and author whose phone federal officials took earlier this year. Noor recently published a memoir about her upbringing and the family's journey to America, and she spent this month promoting it at book events around Minneapolis. That same journey is now the subject of a federal grand jury.
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The Times also detailed where the case stands and what investigators want to know, along with a warning from the top of the Department of Homeland Security.
The people familiar with the seizure of Ms. Noor’s phone spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an open criminal investigation that is before a federal grand jury in Minnesota. Federal officials have issued subpoenas in recent days to Ms. Noor and several other people in Ms. Omar’s orbit.
The investigation seeks to determine whether Ms. Omar and her relatives lied or omitted crucial information in immigration paperwork they filed since moving to the United States in the 1990s. They were admitted as refugees after fleeing Somalia’s civil war.
Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, suggested last month that the investigation could ultimately result in Ms. Omar’s deportation.
Investigators have plenty to work with. Omar's staff appear to have changed her date of birth in 2018 so that the timelines in her naturalization process would line up. Add her record of misfiled campaign finance reports and taxes, and a pattern comes into focus: a lawmaker who treats official documents as rough drafts.
Democrats want us to believe this is a partisan witch hunt, but the record says otherwise. Not only did the investigation begin under President Joe Biden, but on top of that, a Democrat-appointed judge signed off on the warrant.
Omar has spent years insisting that no one is above the law, and now she’s learning the hard way that that includes her, too.