House Majority Whip Tom Emmer has said Rep. Ilhan Omar should face imprisonment and deportation if an ongoing federal investigation establishes that she or her father provided false information on immigration documents to obtain US citizenship.
Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota and the highest-ranking House Republican from Omar’s home state, made the comments in an interview with Fox News Digital.
Omar, a Democrat, is being investigated over allegations that she or her father misrepresented her age on immigration documents when the family arrived in the United States after fleeing Somalia in the late 1990s.
Omar and other Democratic lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have rejected the investigation as politically motivated, particularly because it comes weeks before the November 3 election.
Emmer said allegations concerning Omar had circulated for years and argued that she should face legal consequences if investigators establish that she committed wrongdoing.
“I would say, first, she should probably serve time in the gray bar motel and then get the hell out of here. She should go back to where she came from” if the allegations are proven to be true, Emmer said. “If it’s determined that she lied to gain citizenship, then, absolutely, she should go back to the front of the line.”
The comments followed a federal search of Omar’s Washington, D.C., residence earlier in the week. Agents seized her cellphone and other property during the operation.
The investigation reportedly centres on the circumstances surrounding her father’s naturalisation as a US citizen in 2000. Omar was believed to have been 17 at the time and, as a minor, would have automatically obtained citizenship alongside her father under US law.
Recent allegations, however, claim that she was already 18 when her father became a citizen, which would have meant she had to pursue citizenship through a separate process.
Following the search, Omar said she was being targeted by the Trump administration because of her political opposition to the president.
“I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation,” Omar wrote on X.
“I will not be silenced.”
Omar’s supporters and other critics of the investigation have questioned the timing of the search, describing it as an extraordinary move coming less than three weeks before Election Day.
Jeffries and senior Democratic leaders also condemned the operation in a joint statement, calling the raid
“deeply disturbing and raises serious questions about the continued corrupt weaponization of the federal government against Donald Trump’s adversaries.”
Emmer, however, dismissed claims that the investigation was politically driven. He pointed to the search warrant as evidence that investigators had obtained judicial approval based on sufficient grounds.
“That judge had to determine that there was probable cause that a federal crime has been committed. And I’ll tell you what, as long as it was Ilhan Omar, it was going to be scrutinized to the very detail,” Emmer said.
He added: “So, the fact that they issued the warrant in the first place and then executed it, I mean, maybe after all these years, someone is finally going to hold Ilhan Omar accountable.”
