First posted on Instagram · @profilopolitics
Federal agents seized the phone of Ilhan Omar's older sister, Sahra Noor, earlier this year — and family text messages taken from that phone helped convince a judge to sign off on the raid of the congresswoman's Washington home.
The New York Times reports the criminal investigation into Omar's immigration history advanced after investigators reviewed the family texts from the seized phone — before agents ever knocked on her door. The case is now being built before a federal grand jury in Minnesota, aimed at proving she conspired to commit immigration fraud.
The grand jury's net is wide. Roughly a dozen subpoenas went out starting Friday, including to Noor and at least one other family member — Omar herself was not subpoenaed. Agents have also sought to speak with her sister directly, and Reuters reported Friday that a sister of the congresswoman voluntarily spoke with federal agents, though it did not say which one or what was discussed.
At the center of the case is paperwork from decades ago: investigators are examining whether Omar's late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, provided false information on immigration forms — including about his military service and about his daughter's age. Omar derived her citizenship as a minor through her father's naturalization in 2000, and earlier records searches by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reportedly found no record of that naturalization — though a missing record alone does not prove fraud, and Somali archives from the era are incomplete.
The search itself came at dawn on Monday, October 12, when Homeland Security Investigations agents executed the warrant at Omar's Washington home around 6:00 a.m. and seized her phone, passport and computers, according to the Wall Street Journal. A magistrate judge limited how investigators could access her congressional records before approving the warrant, under the Constitution's Speech or Debate protections.
Noor, who lives in Nairobi and is touring the United States with her memoir “Salt in the Snow: A Somali Immigrant Story,” has been pulled into the fallout: her scheduled Thursday night appearance at the University of Minnesota Rochester was cancelled for what the bookstore called a “family emergency.” Omar, meanwhile, has not been seen in public since Monday's raid.
Omar has not been charged and denies wrongdoing. She has called the search an “outrageous abuse of power” and “an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies,” vowing: “I will not be silenced.” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has called it a “strong case” built on multiple judge-signed warrants. What happens next now sits with the Minnesota grand jury — and with whatever those family text messages actually say.
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