The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has hinted that Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar "could go to jail" or even be expelled from the country, just days after federal agents searched her home in Washington and seized her mobile phone as part of a criminal case.
"She could be deported. She could also go to jail," Trump stated when reporters asked him about the possible legal consequences for the representative from Minnesota. The Republican leader described Omar as a "sick and very dishonest person who hates our country" and disqualified her roots by claiming that Somalia, the country where she was born, "is essentially not even a country." "She comes to tell us how to run the United States (...) she says she has constitutional rights and has never seen the word constitutional before," he added.
These words come as a federal investigation progresses into alleged immigration fraud. The then-border chief of the Trump Administration, the so-called 'border czar', Tom Homan, explained on Fox News that Omar could lose her U.S. citizenship and be deported if it is confirmed that she committed fraud during her immigration process.
"Of course, if you lie during the naturalization process, there is a process to revoke someone's nationality," Homan detailed to the conservative channel, emphasizing that investigators have conveyed to him that they have "a solid case." The investigation focuses on allegations that Omar or her father falsified the year of birth in the immigration documentation when the family left Somalia in the late 1990s. The father obtained citizenship in 2000 and Omar — supposedly 17 years old at that time — would have automatically gained citizenship as a minor, but authorities are trying to clarify whether she was actually 18 years old and should have completed the process on her own.
When asked whether the federal government might be exploring other possible crimes, Homan avoided specifics and referred any additional clarification to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Meanwhile, Trump has expressed his desire for the rival Republican candidate to defeat Omar at the polls, stating that the congresswoman is reelected because "Somalis vote for her, and most of them shouldn't be here."
The registration of Omar's home took place in the final stretch of the midterm legislative election campaign on November 3. The representative, a member of the most leftist sector of the Democratic Party known as "The Squad," argues that the police operation responds to a political persecution and a partisan use of Justice by her opponents. "For ten years Trump has attacked me with unfounded lies and rumors. This is just an escalation of his campaign of political intimidation. They are not going to silence me," the congresswoman denounced on her social media.