One hundred seventy-five members of the House put their names on Monday to a letter denouncing the federal search of Representative Ilhan Omar’s Washington home and demanding that the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security take no further action that could affect the outcome of the coming election. The letter, led by Representatives Pramila Jayapal, Jamie Raskin, Robert Garcia, Bennie Thompson, Yvette Clarke and Greg Casar, was sent to Attorney General Todd Blanche and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin eight days before the November 3 midterm elections, in which Omar is seeking re-election in Minnesota.
“This weaponization of law enforcement to harass a sitting Member of Congress 22 days before an election is unprecedented and unacceptable,” the members wrote. “We stand with Congresswoman Omar and condemn the weaponization of law enforcement against her. You have already disgraced the offices you hold, and we demand you refrain from taking any further actions that could affect the outcome of the upcoming election.”
The letter leans on the Justice Department’s own rules. The department has long followed a policy of not taking investigative steps relating to a candidate this close to an election when delaying the action would not jeopardize a criminal investigation, the members wrote, and it is a policy Blanche himself has previously invoked as far back as nine months before an election. Omar’s name is on the ballot in Minnesota’s 5th District in one week, and news of the search, “whether properly predicated or not,” could affect voters’ decisions — which, the members argued, is exactly why federal law enforcement should not engage in such conduct while voters are casting their ballots, and why the timing “strips Minnesotans of their right to a free and fair election.”
“Your actions are clearly driven by a pre-determined political outcome rather than an objective pursuit of justice,” the members continued. The probe, they wrote, reportedly concerns immigration paperwork Omar’s late father filed after the family fled Somalia’s civil war when she was eight years old; she became a U.S. citizen at seventeen. A probe of the same matter by the first Trump administration in 2019 ended, the letter notes, with a determination that there was “insufficient evidence of wrongdoing.” That has not stopped administration officials from asserting her guilt in advance, the members wrote: in March, Vice President JD Vance declared that Omar “definitely committed immigration fraud” and asked White House adviser Stephen Miller to “go after her,” and last month Mullin hinted that “something’s going to happen” with the congresswoman. Shortly after the search, the letter notes, Miller’s wife celebrated in a since-deleted social media post: “Promise made, promise kept.” “Political attacks should play no role in federal law enforcement, but they have here.”
The search the letter answers came around dawn on Monday, October 12, when agents from Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, executed a search warrant at Omar’s home in Washington, D.C. Both the White House and the Justice Department have acknowledged that the department secured the warrant as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. By Omar’s account, agents pounded on her door around 6 a.m. and searched for four to five hours; she has said 17 items were taken, among them phones, her passport, computers and notebooks, and the members’ letter says investigators reportedly obtained her DNA as well. A federal magistrate judge placed special screening procedures on the seized material to protect Omar’s legislative work under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, and about a dozen people, including members of her family, have been reported to receive grand jury subpoenas in the investigation.
Omar’s office answered the search the day it happened, calling it “an outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies,” and stating: “The Congresswoman has done nothing wrong.” Omar herself posted that she was “ok” and vowed, “I will not be silenced.” Her lawyers, Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz, have since demanded the return of the seized property, calling the investigation “vindictive, retributive, and politically motivated” and arguing that agents did not follow the notice procedures the judge built into the warrant. In her first interview since the search, Omar described the agents as “intrusive but polite,” said a pre-dawn arrival is designed “to freak her out,” said she is “confident in the fact that I didn’t do anything wrong,” and said the death threats that followed the search have forced her to move out of the Washington home.
The Justice Department has defended the operation as a court-authorized step in a real case. A department spokesperson said Homeland Security Investigations “executed a judicially authorized search warrant” as “part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation,” and the department dismissed her lawyers’ protest letter as “riddled with false allegations and inaccuracies,” saying its attorneys and law enforcement partners “complied with all court orders and legal obligations, as they always do.” Mullin has called the case against Omar a “strong case” and has said investigators expect to take it to a grand jury. Neither the Justice Department nor the Homeland Security Department had publicly answered Monday’s letter from the 175 members as of Monday evening.
The pressure around Omar has only grown since the search. In a filing asking a judge to keep the search warrant sealed, prosecutors from U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office identified her as “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar” — building the name of her ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, into her own. Critics allege the ex-husband is her brother and that the marriage was an immigration fraud; Omar has denied that he is her brother and answered, when asked whether they were related: “Not to my knowledge.” President Trump, asked about the search, called Omar “totally crooked,” has since called for her resignation and has said she could go to jail if the allegations are true. Representative Randy Fine has vowed to pursue her expulsion from the House if investigators find immigration fraud, and Representative Nancy Mace, one of the few Republicans to comment on the search, wrote: “If the fraud is proven, she should be denaturalized and removed from this country. NO ONE is above the law.”
Monday’s letter places the search inside a wider pattern the members say defines this Justice Department: the dismissed indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, a grand jury’s refusal to indict six members of Congress, and the pending charges against Representative LaMonica McIver, which the letter calls baseless. “Your unprecedented attempt to influence an election through federal law enforcement will also fail,” the members wrote, “but the attempt itself is incompatible with our democracy.” Jayapal has said Democrats would “actively and aggressively investigate” the matter if they win the House majority next week, and could move to block funding for the probe.
For now, the investigation stands where it stood before the letter: no charges have been filed against Omar, the warrant affidavit remains sealed, and the government has stated no specific crime it accuses her of committing. What Monday’s letter changes is the political cost of the next step — 175 members of the House, including the party’s leadership, are now on record demanding that Blanche and Mullin take no further election-affecting action at all. Omar faces Republican Dalia al-Aqidi on November 3 in a Minneapolis district she carried by 50 points in 2024.
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