Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) said federal investigators pursuing an immigration fraud case against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) are relying on “bullshit claims that have already been disproven,” pushing back against the Trump administration’s handling of the inquiry.
McBride made the comments in an interview with United TV’s Weekly Update on Friday, defending Omar as the Somali-born lawmaker faces scrutiny over her naturalization process and allegations, which she disputes, that she married her brother to help him obtain U.S. immigration status.
“The fact that they are trying to go after my colleague, Ilhan Omar, and go after her citizenship — a duly elected member of the United States House of Representatives, a citizen of the United States — they are trying to revoke her citizenship on bullshit claims that have already been disproven about her age at the point that her father’s citizenship went through because she has stood up to this president and to Republicans in power,” McBride said.
“It is a disgusting weaponization of people’s livelihoods, of their lives, of their citizenship, that should have no place in a free democratic society,” McBride added.
The dispute centers partly on claims that Omar misrepresented her age — saying she was 17 rather than 18 — to obtain U.S. citizenship through her father in 2000, after arriving in the United States from Somalia in 1995.
Federal investigators carried out a pre-dawn raid on Omar’s Washington, D.C., home earlier this month, reportedly seizing 17 items and collecting DNA samples as part of the immigration fraud inquiry. Omar is also the subject of a separate investigation into possible financial crimes.
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