Federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s D.C. home under a judicially authorized warrant in an ongoing criminal probe, a move House Democrats call corrupt weaponization of federal power.
Homeland Security Investigations agents carried out the search at the Minnesota Democrat’s Washington residence Monday morning. The Justice Department confirmed the action and tied it to an active federal case.
A department spokesperson said the agents executed a judicially authorized search warrant as “part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.” The search landed 22 days before the midterm elections, with Omar running for re-election and long aligned with the House progressive faction known as the “Squad.”
Two people familiar with the matter said the probe has run for years. It involves Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. attorney in Minneapolis, and the Justice Department, and draws on whistleblowers, documents, and witness testimony. One of those people said the inquiry deals partly with immigration and fraud and extends beyond those issues.
Omar answered on X by casting the search as partisan retaliation rather than routine law enforcement. She framed the warrant as pressure meant to shut her down.
"An attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. Over the last decade, President Donald 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."
House Democratic leaders struck the same note in a joint statement. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar called the search “deeply disturbing” and said it “raises serious questions about the continued corrupt weaponization of the federal government against Donald Trump’s adversaries.” They vowed to “deliver full accountability for the rogue abuse of power from the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice.”
That line fits a familiar pattern: when scrutiny reaches a progressive star, party leaders reach for the weaponization charge instead of waiting for the evidence. Omar’s brand of politics has long tracked with the socialist-aligned left, a lane that continues to pull Democrats in polling on DSA support across the party.
Asked about the search Monday, President Donald Trump said he had “nothing to do with it.” He added that investigators were “looking at her very carefully.”
"I’ve always found her to be totally crooked, personally, but that has nothing to do with me. I think she’s a terrible person, but that’s really up to the DOJ."
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security referred questions on the search to the Justice Department. The department’s own statement pointed to a judge-approved warrant and an ongoing criminal case, not a political directive from the Oval Office.
Border czar Tom Homan had already previewed the posture last month in an interview with Fox News, which first reported the home search. Homan said immigration violations and marriage fraud get investigated whether the subject holds office or not.
"If someone committed immigration violation, if someone committed marriage fraud or anything like that, regardless if they’re a congressman or not, no one’s above the law. So I’ll leave it at that. We’ll let HSI, Homeland Security Investigations, continue the investigation."
That standard is the point. A member of Congress does not get a free pass because the politics are loud or the calendar is tight.
Omar represents Minnesota, where federal prosecutors have pursued sprawling social-services fraud cases. The Justice Department has announced criminal charges against more than a dozen people there over alleged theft from public aid programs. At the center of one major case is Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit tied to an alleged $250 million theft from a Covid-era food program for children.
The U.S. attorney’s office has said most defendants in related Minnesota social-services fraud cases are of Somali descent. Omar herself fled Somalia’s civil war at age 8, spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp, and immigrated to the United States as a child in the 1990s. The NBC News account discusses the fraud scandals and Trump’s public focus on Minnesota’s Somali immigrant community alongside the search; it does not state a direct charging link between Omar and those prosecutions.
Still, the state’s record on waste and abuse remains a live issue for voters and for Minnesota’s political leadership more broadly. Large-scale fraud against taxpayers is not a talking point. It is a documented enforcement priority.
Because the search fell 22 days before the midterms, Democrats moved quickly to cast it as timed interference. The Justice Department has a long-standing practice of extra care near elections when an investigative step could appear to help or hurt a candidate. There is no blanket ban on action inside 60 days. Written policy tells prosecutors and agents not to time steps or public statements to influence an election and directs them to seek guidance when timing could raise questions.
Late last month, the department’s Office of the Inspector General recommended that leaders prioritize guidance on actions that could “foreseeably affect an impending election,” including overt investigative steps, indictments, and public announcements. That recommendation traced back to a 2018 report. Whether agents sought such guidance before Monday’s search was not described in the available reporting.
Democrats also reached for older comparisons. In 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey publicly disclosed developments in the Hillary Clinton email probe 11 days before the presidential election; Trump later fired him. Separately, during the Biden years, federal prosecutors indicted then-New York Mayor Eric Adams on bribery and campaign-finance charges about a year before the 2025 mayoral contest. In February 2025, then-acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove moved to dismiss that case, writing that the step was necessary in part because of “risks of interference” with the city’s elections.
Those episodes cut in more than one direction. They show how both parties cry foul when the calendar is close and the target is theirs. They do not erase a signed warrant or a multi-year paper trail.
Trump has criticized Omar for years and intensified the rhetoric in the days before the search. At a Saturday rally in Tennessee he said, “How about Ilhan Omar? She comes from Somalia,” and added, “All they have is crime and squalor.” He went on: “What they’ve done to Minnesota, these people from Somalia, what they’ve done to Minnesota should never be allowed,” and said “JD Vance and our people are looking at it very strongly.”
Last week on Truth Social he told Minnesotans to “fight back” against Somali immigrants and claimed the state “is being taken over by Somali Immigrants.” Early this year he said the Justice Department and Congress were “looking at” Omar. Omar has blamed his rhetoric as a factor in an attack on her at a town hall in January.
Public criticism is not a search warrant. A judge’s authorization is. So are whistleblowers, documents, and sworn witnesses inside a yearslong case run by Homeland Security Investigations and federal prosecutors in Minneapolis. Progressive politics thrives on moral lecture; it has less patience for House fights over socialism when accountability reaches one of its own.
Major questions remain open. The Justice Department statement did not name the crimes under review, identify the court that issued the warrant, or say whether Omar was the named target. It did not list what, if anything, agents seized, and it reported no arrests tied to the Monday search. Omar’s full post and the complete leadership statement were only partly quoted in the initial coverage.
Scandal pressure has ended other Democratic campaigns when facts piled up, including cases where misconduct allegations forced an exit from a high-profile race. Here the investigation is still moving, and the public file is thin on charging details.
Equal enforcement is not persecution. When a judicial warrant lands on a powerful progressive’s doorstep, the country should get facts and process, not a rush to declare the referee corrupt.