Federal agents used text messages from Rep. Ilhan Omar’s sister’s seized phone to win a judge’s approval for a raid on the Minnesota Democrat’s Washington home in an immigration fraud probe.
Homeland Security Investigations agents entered Omar’s Washington, D.C., residence early Monday and took her phone, passport, notebooks, and personal computers as part of an ongoing criminal inquiry into whether she and her family lied on immigration paperwork when they entered the United States in 1995.
The New York Post reported that investigators first seized the phone of Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor, earlier this year. Family text messages on that device then helped secure a federal judge’s sign-off for the search of the congresswoman’s home.
The Department of Justice framed the action as routine enforcement under a lawful warrant. A DOJ spokesperson said Homeland Security Investigations “executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice” in the D.C. area and called it “part of an ongoing federal investigation.”
Fox News reported the search began around 6 a.m. and centered on alleged fraud in childhood immigration paperwork completed by Omar’s late father. Officials tied the warrant to that probe, not to a sudden political stunt.
Sahra Noor, who now lives in Kenya and wrote a memoir titled “Salt in the Snow: A Somali Immigrant Story,” had her phone taken months before the Monday raid. Three people familiar with the matter told the New York Times the seizure fed the wider look at possible immigration fraud.
Before agents walked through Omar’s door, federal investigators also collected DNA from her trash. Former FBI special agent Tracy Walder told NewsNation the tactic is straightforward when material sits in discarded garbage.
"To me, if they are obviously trying to obtain DNA, then, yes, that is a very easy get, especially if it was discarded even in a trash can,"
That collection sat alongside the phone evidence and family subpoenas. Feds issued subpoenas to several members of Omar’s family as they prepared to present material to a federal grand jury in Minnesota.
Readers following the case have already seen reporting on how agents collected Omar family trash for DNA ahead of the same D.C. search.
Noor skipped a scheduled book event in Rochester on Thursday, citing a “family emergency.” The timing lined up with the fallout from the home search and the expanding paper trail.
Omar, a Somalia-born Democrat from Minnesota and a prominent member of the House “Squad,” has said she became a naturalized citizen in 2000 at age 17 through her father. Investigators are examining whether she conspired to commit immigration fraud when the family arrived as refugees after Somalia’s civil war.
Sources previously told The Post that her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, misrepresented his identity when he came to the United States. He has been described as a high-ranking colonel for a brutal dictator whose rule left an estimated 200,000 people dead before it collapsed. Those claims remain part of the investigative file, not a courtroom verdict.
Evidence from the raid and the earlier phone seizure is expected to go before the Minnesota grand jury on the core question: whether Omar and her relatives lied in 1995. No charges, indictments, or final findings have been announced.
The same inquiry has already produced grand jury subpoenas aimed at Omar relatives as prosecutors map the family’s immigration record.
Omar’s spokeswoman, Jackie Rogers, declined to address the seizure of Noor’s phone directly. She instead blamed former President Trump and cast the search as payback.
"Trump has spread lie after lie about the congresswoman in a desperate attempt to justify his extraordinary abuse of power,"
Rogers added a second charge in the same statement.
"This is politically motivated and an escalation of Trump’s personal vendetta against her lasting over a decade."
Omar herself denounced the search in sharper terms, calling it an effort “to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.”
Those statements collide with the DOJ’s public description of a judge-approved warrant in an active criminal case. A warrant requires a neutral magistrate to find probable cause. Dumpster DNA collection and a sister’s phone are classic investigative steps, not press releases.
Earlier coverage also tracked how federal agents seized Omar’s cellphone during the D.C. raid tied to the immigration paperwork review.
Former President Barack Obama joined the criticism, ripping the federal investigation into Omar as “appalling,” the Washington Examiner reported.
The probe reaches beyond one morning search. Investigators have weighed whether fraud in the original filings could affect Omar’s status, a separate track that follows the same 1995 paperwork and the father’s alleged identity claims.
Related reporting has noted that investigators are weighing citizenship consequences after the home raid. That question sits with prosecutors and the grand jury, not with cable-news talking points.
Tom Homan and other officials have previously confirmed the criminal immigration-fraud inquiry remains open. The Monday warrant, the sister’s texts, the trash DNA, and the family subpoenas all fit that continuing case rather than a one-off raid.
What remains unclear is the precise wording of the family texts, the full list of subpoenaed relatives, and any DNA match results. Case numbers and charging statutes have not been released publicly. Absolute calendar dates for the phone seizure and the DNA collection were not detailed beyond “earlier this year” and “before the raid.”
Still, the sequence is concrete: phone seized, texts reviewed, judge signed off, agents collected discarded DNA, then HSI executed the warrant at the D.C. home and carted out devices and documents headed for a Minnesota grand jury.
Lawful immigration depends on honest applications. When federal agents follow phone evidence and trash DNA to a congresswoman’s door under a judge’s warrant, the process is doing what voters expect it to do, test the paperwork, not the polling.
