As Team Trump targets Ilhan Omar, a radical endgame comes into focus

Federal investigators are reportedly trying to assemble a case that would revoke the U.S. citizenship of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and lead to her deportation, according to the Wall Street Journal. MS NOW commentator Steve Benen argues that no modern president has used federal power this way against a sitting lawmaker.

Sources told the Journal that the inquiry centers on how Omar became a citizen after arriving from Somalia decades ago, and that agents are scrutinizing both her conduct and that of her late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, who relocated the family from a Kenyan refugee camp in 1995. Homeland Security Investigations agents have searched her D.C. home and taken her laptop, cellphone and passport. Benen also notes that the probe is moving ahead inside the 60-day pre-election blackout window, and that President Donald Trump now disclaims involvement in an investigation he publicly demanded months earlier.

In 2019, Trump urged Omar and several progressive colleagues to "go back" to where they came from; she was the only one of them born abroad. Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney and MS NOW legal analyst, said the case is also about intimidation, warning that no foreign-born American is safe.

Summarized by PolitiKool from MS NOW’s reporting. Read the full story at MS NOW →