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Wielding the power of law enforcement against political opponents is bad enough. But the Trump administration's legal vendetta against Representative Ilhan Omar also reflects something more ominous: an ongoing effort to strip naturalized Americans of their citizenship, often on the same kind of flimsy pretexts the administration seems to be searching for in Omar's case.
Last month, federal agents -- specifically Immigration and Customs Enforcement's investigations unit -- executed a court-authorized search warrant and raided Omar's home in Washington, D.C. The focus of their investigation appears to be Omar's immigration paperwork and whether she committed fraud to obtain US citizenship decades ago.
According to The Wall Street Journal, sources familiar with the probe say that the federal government is trying to build a case to denaturalize and deport the Minnesota representative, a Democrat and longtime thorn in the Trump administration's side.
Omar arrived in the United States in the 1990s. Her father -- since deceased -- brought her and other family members over from a refugee camp in Kenya after fleeing the civil war in Somalia, and she became a citizen in 2000.
One of the questions investigators are digging into is whether she or her father lied about her age on their immigration applications. At the time, her paperwork said she was 17 years old, which meant that she automatically qualified for citizenship alongside her father. Had she been 18, she would have had to go through her own separate process.
To be sure, lying on immigration filings is illegal and can be used as grounds to denaturalize someone.
But the evidence for falsifying immigration papers in this case seems thin -- and points only to possible wrongdoing by Omar's father, not the congresswoman herself.
Omar has been a citizen for nearly three decades, and Homeland Security officials under the Biden administration already investigated a similar matter regarding Omar and decided they didn't have sufficient evidence of fraud to pursue the case any further.
What's alarming about the revived Omar investigation is not just the individual details of her probe but that it's just one case in a broader effort under the Trump administration to denaturalize American citizens at an extraordinary pace. In 2025, the Trump administration issued guidance to US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement offices to refer 100 to 200 denaturalization cases per month. And according to The New York Times, as of April, the Department of Justice has targeted nearly 400 people for potential denaturalization proceedings.
By contrast, before Trump's second term, denaturalization cases were extremely rare. Between 1990 and 2017, the United States filed, on average, just 11 denaturalization cases per year -- often targeting individuals who posed a threat to national security. There was only a slight increase after Trump was first elected in 2016, with the government filing about 15 denaturalization cases per year between 2017 and 2025.
The raid on Omar's home also sets a bad precedent, which is why it should be roundly condemned by Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike.
If the White House feels emboldened to pursue denaturalization proceedings against people it perceives to be political enemies, then what stops a Democratic administration from digging into high-profile conservative figures' immigration backgrounds? After all, questions around Melania Trump's or Elon Musk's immigration process have swirled for years, but does that mean they should be singled out and investigated so long after becoming citizens?
In Omar's case, it's certainly possible that immigration fraud occurred. The New York Times, for example, recently reported that Obama-era investigators found some evidence that Omar entered a sham marriage with a British citizen to help him get a green card, and they suspected that the man is her own brother.
But if that turns out to be true, Omar should be held accountable as a citizen -- not a foreigner who ought to be deported. After all, that marriage occurred after she was naturalized.
Stripping someone of their citizenship should be extremely rare. The time for the government to litigate any potential problems with a person's immigration petition is during their application process.
Once someone becomes a citizen of the United States, they should be treated like natural-born citizens, and their citizenship should not be conditional. Even if they commit a crime, then they should be taken to court and held accountable for that crime, just like anyone else.
But going after citizens, especially so long after they have become naturalized, over minor details in their immigration applications -- like, say, Omar's age -- is clearly an effort to make all naturalized citizens feel like their citizenship status will never be guaranteed. And that's a threat to the very freedom that this country has long promised foreign- and natural-born citizens alike.
-- The Boston Globe