Rep. Ilhan Omar announced that she is moving out of her Washington, D.C., home following an early morning federal search of the property, citing increased safety concerns and death threats.
The Minnesota Democrat said Wednesday in an interview with MS NOW that public exposure of her address and threats have made living at the residence unfeasible for her and her family.
Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a court-authorized search warrant at her home on Oct. 12, seizing 17 items, including phones, notebooks and personal effects, Ms. Omar said.
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“Obviously, I can’t continue to live there,” she told MS NOW’s Chris Hayes, “because our address has been public and with the death threats that I deal with, it’s no longer going to be feasible to be in that house and have my kids visiting off and on, having people track them.”
Ms. Omar said she woke up to agents “pounding on the doors” at 6 a.m. on Oct. 12. They had “surrounded” her Washington house, she said, before providing her a search warrant and going “room by room.”
She said she was asked to sign a document waiving protection provided to her in the Constitution as a member of Congress, but she declined.
The roughly five-hour raid involved up to two dozen agents who “mostly conducted themselves in a decent way,” according to Ms. Omar.
Federal authorities are reportedly examining potential fraud related to her family’s historical immigration paperwork, which Ms. Omar has firmly denied, calling the probe a politically motivated attack.
The paperwork includes documents her late father completed when Ms. Omar was a child. The feds are checking if records about her age and immigration status contain false information.
She has said she came to the U.S. as a Somali refugee at age 12 and became a naturalized citizen when she was 17, after her father completed his naturalization process.
The federal agents seized her phone, an old phone, her youngest daughter’s old phone, her husband’s notebooks, a camera and a Somali phrase book for children, she said.
A grand jury is collecting evidence, with more than a dozen subpoenas, including to family members.
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