Before federal agents ever knocked on Rep. Ilhan Omar's door, they went through her garbage. Multiple sources told NewsNation that agents secretly collected discarded trash in hopes of obtaining DNA from the Minnesota congresswoman and members of her family — quiet evidence-gathering that came before Monday's raid on her Washington, D.C., home.
The DNA was important to the investigation, the sources said, and it became part of a search-warrant application covering more than a dozen locations in addition to her home. The case involves additional family members, they said, and it is heading to a grand jury.
DNA is one of the strongest tools investigators can bring into a courtroom, because it can prove or disprove biological relationships — siblings, parent and child — with a certainty paper records cannot. In an investigation focused on a family's immigration paperwork and history, that proof can be decisive. Former federal prosecutor Shan Wu and former FBI special agent Tracy Walder both made the point on NewsNation: DNA is often the best evidence of relatedness for court, and the fact that agents pulled trash first can indicate they still lacked enough for a compulsory DNA sample at that stage. Wu added that the DNA angle itself is unusual — "If we're looking at DNA, it's like a whodunnit: 'Were they there?'"
The technique, known as dumpster diving, is standard and legal. Once trash is left out for collection, the Supreme Court has ruled — in California v. Greenwood, in 1988 — that people generally no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy in it, so agents can take it without a warrant. Investigators use it when they do not yet have enough probable cause for a search of a house or a person, or when serving a warrant or subpoena would alert the target and risk evidence being destroyed or people fleeing. A trash pull before the raid fits that pattern exactly: build the probable cause quietly, then move in the open.
And the target is bigger than the story the public knows. The sources said the case is broader than the familiar immigration allegations against Omar, including the long-running claim that she married her brother to help him gain citizenship; reporting around the investigation has also pointed to a possible changed-birthdate angle and to claims that the inquiry is driven by an effort to revoke her citizenship and deport her. The case is being run out of the Minneapolis HSI office, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has confirmed that agents executed multiple search warrants the day Omar's home was searched, calling the investigation a "strong case" whose evidence is expected to go before a grand jury.
The raid itself is not in dispute. HSI agents searched Omar's Washington home on Monday, October 12, seized her personal cellphone, and prosecutors have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including to relatives; The New York Times reported that her sister's phone was seized before the search of the lawmaker's home. A Biden-era Justice Department investigation into Omar was previously opened and closed. The dumpster-diving detail, for now, rests on NewsNation's sources. Omar has not been charged, and she calls the investigation political: "This is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. 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. I will not be silenced."
What comes next may stay hidden for a while. Sources told NewsNation the indictments being prepared could be "stunning in nature and far beyond anything the public has understood the case to be about," with any charges likely to arrive after the November 3 election and the search-warrant returns sealed while the grand jury works. A decade of allegations against Omar is now being tested the way investigators test everything else — against physical evidence, including, reportedly, what she threw away.
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