Rep. Ilhan Omar says the Department of Homeland Security has never notified her of any criminal investigation, but White House border czar Tom Homan and other senior officials say the probe is already underway.
Homan confirmed on "The Sunday Briefing" that ICE is conducting an "ongoing criminal investigation" involving the Minnesota Democrat, a naturalized U.S. citizen who has faced years of allegations that she married her brother to help him obtain American citizenship. When Fox News Digital asked Omar whether DHS had reached out about any investigation, her answer was two words.
"No, they have not," Omar said.
She went further, dismissing the allegations as recycled partisan attacks. "The right wing has always had this s*** going, so I don't really worry about it," she told Fox News Digital.
Omar's flat denial runs directly into a wall of on-the-record statements from some of the highest-ranking officials in the Trump administration, officials who are not hedging.
Asked point-blank whether he was confirming an investigation involving Omar, Homan did not equivocate.
"I'm confirming that ICE is, yeah, look, I said months ago that there's something that's been reported and needs to be looked at."
But Homan stopped short of laying out specifics. He declined to say what the investigation centers on and refused to confirm whether the federal government already possesses evidence that Omar committed immigration or naturalization fraud. He did, however, outline the legal tool the government could use if fraud is proven: denaturalization.
"Denaturalization is a process. It's a very serious process, so if someone lies through that process to become a citizen, and we can prove they, in fact, lied or misrepresented themselves, we can absolutely denaturalize them."
Homan added that the process has been carried out "many times." The implication was plain, Omar's status as a sitting member of Congress does not place her above the law. As the New York Post reported, Homan stated explicitly: "If someone committed an immigration violation, if someone committed marriage fraud or anything like that, regardless if they're a congressman or not, no one's above the law."
That principle, that elected office does not confer immunity from immigration enforcement, is exactly the kind of straightforward standard most Americans expect their government to uphold. Whether it will be upheld here remains an open question.
Homan was not the first senior official to go public. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin had already alluded to an investigation into Omar's immigration history during a podcast appearance, raising the marriage fraud allegations directly.
"There may be more to this, the whole family migration and possibly some illegal activity for them to come to the United States to begin with.... If we can prove it, that you shouldn't have been here in the first place, we will deport you."
Mullin's language was blunt, and it went beyond the immigration question to the broader chain of family migration that brought Omar to the United States. The New York Post quoted Mullin saying flatly, "Something's going to happen," and reporting that the DHS secretary claimed Omar married her brother to bring him into the country.
Vice President JD Vance weighed in during May, claiming the Justice Department was looking into whether Omar committed immigration fraud. Vance did not hold back. "We think Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America," he said, adding: "If we think that there's a crime, we're going to prosecute that crime."
Omar has denied that the DOJ has opened any investigation. No public evidence confirming an open DOJ probe has surfaced. But the gap between what Omar says and what multiple administration officials say on the record keeps widening.
The administration's public comments are one thing. A paper trail is another. Just the News reported that ICE refused to release records related to an immigration fraud investigation into Omar after receiving a Freedom of Information Act request. The agency cited a specific legal exemption, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(A), which applies only when law enforcement proceedings are pending and disclosure could interfere with them.
That exemption is not a catch-all. Federal agencies cannot invoke it casually. It requires both an active enforcement proceeding and a concrete reason to believe releasing records would cause harm to that proceeding. ICE's response stated: "Disclosure of any responsive records at this time could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings."
For Omar's defenders, the FOIA refusal proves nothing on its own. For investigators and legal observers, it is consistent with exactly the kind of active probe that Homan, Mullin, and Vance have described. As we previously reported, ICE's decision to withhold those records drew immediate attention because of its narrow legal basis.
Homan himself told reporters in December 2025 that DHS was actively pulling records and files. "We're pulling the records, we're pulling the files. We're looking at it," he said at the time. "I'm running that down this week."
The immigration fraud allegations are not the only cloud over Omar. Fox News Digital noted that Omar's amended financial disclosure forms and a steep drop in her reported net worth had already caught national attention. The specifics of those discrepancies were not detailed in the report, but the filings drew scrutiny because of the size of the revision, Omar's office reportedly revised a $30 million filing down to a $100,000 report.
Vance cited the financial disclosure issues alongside the marriage fraud allegations when he confirmed DOJ interest in May. The two threads, immigration questions and financial irregularities, appear to be running in parallel, though it remains unclear whether federal investigators are treating them as connected.
Separately, the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board previously found that Omar filed joint tax returns in 2014 and 2015 with a man she was not legally married to, Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi, while she was still legally married to another man, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. She did not legally divorce Elmi until 2017. The state board ordered Omar to repay her campaign committee nearly $3,500 and pay a $500 civil penalty. AP News reported at the time that tax experts considered criminal consequences unlikely absent proven criminal intent, but Omar's campaign maintained that "all of Rep. Omar's tax filings are fully compliant with all applicable tax law."
The tax filing issue matters because it established a documented pattern: Omar's personal and legal records did not always match. Whether that pattern extends to her immigration paperwork is the question federal investigators now appear to be pursuing.
Omar is not only facing scrutiny from executive branch officials. Members of Congress have also pressed the administration to act. As we previously covered, lawmakers have called on the Trump administration to release whatever immigration evidence it holds and have urged Congress to consider a vote on expulsion.
That kind of congressional pressure does not guarantee action, but it narrows the political space for the investigation to quietly disappear. When both the executive and legislative branches are publicly demanding answers, the usual Washington strategy of running out the clock becomes harder to execute.
Some reporting has suggested the federal probe may be focused more narrowly on citizenship paperwork than on the brother-marriage allegation itself. If true, that distinction matters legally, but it does not change the core question of whether Omar obtained her citizenship through fraud.
Fox News Digital's reporting makes one thing clear: someone is wrong. Omar says no federal agency has contacted her about any investigation. Homan says ICE is running an ongoing criminal probe. Mullin says "something's going to happen." Vance says the DOJ is reviewing the case. ICE has refused to release records, citing active enforcement proceedings.
It is possible that an investigation is underway and Omar has not yet been formally notified, investigations often proceed for months or years before a subject is contacted. It is also possible that the administration's public statements have outpaced the actual investigative work. No charges have been filed. No arrests have been made. No court documents have surfaced.
But Omar's posture, dismissing the allegations as old partisan noise and insisting she has heard nothing, sits uncomfortably next to the growing stack of on-the-record statements from officials with direct authority over the agencies she says have not contacted her. If the investigation is real, her dismissals will age poorly. If it is not, the administration owes the public an explanation for why three of its most senior officials spoke as if it were.
Either way, the American public deserves a straight answer, and "no, they have not" is not going to hold up much longer against a paper trail that keeps getting thicker.
