On Oct. 12, agents from the Department of Homeland Security raided Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, D.C., home. The government declined to say what prompted the raid, but some sources said it concerns allegations of false statements and fraud in immigration paperwork. The search, conducted just 22 days before the midterm elections, also breaks with a Justice Department norm against taking investigative steps that could affect an election. Donald Trump’s claim that he had nothing to do with the raid, which he managed to undercut in the same breath, strains credulity.
The Guardian explains:
Donald Trump and key allies have accused Omar of fraud related to her family’s immigration history, fantasizing openly about denaturalizing her and expelling her from the country. When asked about the raid on Monday, Trump said he had “nothing to do with it” and the investigation is “up to the DoJ”. “I understand they’re looking at her very carefully,” Trump told reporters. “I’ve always found her to be totally crooked, personally, but that has nothing to do with me.” …
Administration officials, and the president himself, have long hinted at a federal investigation into Omar. “Let’s see what happens,” Trump said at a rally on Saturday after attacking Omar by name, adding that Vice-President JD Vance “and our people are looking at it very strongly”. …
In March, Vance told the rightwing media personality Benny Johnson: “We actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud” and that he had recently spoken to the top Trump aide Stephen Miller about “what the remedies are”. The homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, told Johnson last month that there was an ongoing investigation and “something’s going to happen”.
Trump and his allies have long been fixated on Omar. He has accused her of marrying her brother, and he has made repeated racist attacks on Somali immigrants in general and on her in particular. Just last month, Mullin came under fierce criticism from the far right for failing to go after Omar. He appears to have taken the criticism to heart. Investigators have also seized Omar’s phone and issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, some of them to members of her family. It is hard to see the raid as motivated by anything other than a desire to intimidate one of the president’s political enemies, placate his critics on the far right, and energize the base ahead of the midterms. Otherwise, it would make little sense to raid a sitting member of Congress’s home three weeks before an election over immigration paperwork that is years old.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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