Democrats hammer Trump for late-election raid on Omar’s home

Democrats are up in arms this week after federal agents raided the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), accusing the Trump administration of weaponizing the government to go after political adversaries.

The Democrats are particularly piqued that the operation, conducted Monday morning by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), took place just weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms. They’re denouncing Trump for defying a long-standing Justice Department policy discouraging the escalation of politically sensitive investigations within 60 days of elections.

“As Trump’s popularity craters amid rising prices and his deeply unpopular war, everything he does is an attempt to distract his remaining followers,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) wrote Monday on social platform X.

“But raiding the home of a member of the opposing party right before the election — and tipping off FoxNews in advance so they are on hand to publicize it — is insanely corrupt even for Donald Trump,” he continued.

In a joint statement, the top three House Democratic leaders — Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Katherine Clark (Mass.) and Pete Aguilar (Calif.) — characterized the raid as a “deeply disturbing” extension of Trump’s long-running feud with Omar, a foreign-born Muslim congresswoman who is a frequent target of the right.

“For years, Donald Trump and far-right extremists have relentlessly targeted Congresswoman Omar with vile personal attacks and baseless accusations,” the Democratic leaders said in the statement. “Now, less than 30 days until the midterm election, his violent mass deportation machine has descended upon the home of a duly elected Member of Congress and her family.”

The Democrats, who are favored to win control of the House in November, are vowing to investigate the Omar raid, among other cases they consider to be abuses of executive power, if they have the gavels next year.

“The American people deserve transparency, and we will deliver full accountability for the rogue abuse of power from the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice,” Jeffries, Clark and Aguilar said.

Monday’s raid was conducted before dawn at Omar’s Washington-area home by agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a criminal unit of ICE. The operation came as the administration has pursued several investigations into Omar across a range of topics, including her finances and immigration status.

HSI, considered an elite unit within ICE, typically investigates major cross-border crime such as human trafficking, child exploitation, and transnational gangs and smuggling.

Though they conducted the search, the Department of Homeland Security referred comment to the Justice Department, which stressed that they got a judicial warrant for the search.

“Today in the Washington, D.C, area, Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice. This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation,” a spokesperson said.

Omar, 44, was born in Somalia but fled the country as a child to escape violence and spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before coming to the United States in 1995. She became a U.S. citizen five years later, when she was 17, and was first elected to the House in 2018, becoming one of the first two Muslim women ever elected to Congress.

That background, combined with Omar’s outspoken criticisms of Israel on human rights, has made her a target of conservatives, including Trump, who has questioned her patriotism since her earliest days on Capitol Hill. Trump has called Omar “garbage” and has also said “Somalis should “go back to where they came from.”

After Monday’s raid, Omar issued a defiant statement accusing Trump of “political intimidation” and saying she “will not be silenced.”

“Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” Omar wrote on X. “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.”

Last month, Homeland Security Department Secretary Markwayne Mullin said his office was investigating Omar for potential violations of immigration law stretching back to her arrival in America as a refugee.

“We feel … 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,” Mullin told Benny Johnson, a conservative pundit. “There’s no expiration to that. If we can prove it — that you shouldn’t have been here in the first place — we’ll deport you.”

Mullin also rejected the notion that Omar was being targeted only because she’s a Democrat.

“When we move forward it’s not political. It’s because you chose to break the nation’s laws,” he said. “I don’t make the laws anymore, I’m in charge of enforcing the laws.”

According to Fox News, the basis for the search was part of an investigation into her immigration paperwork, which was filled out by her late father when she was a child.

The Justice Department has expanded its investigations into potential fraud in the immigration system, including a denaturalization campaign to strip citizenship of those who did not provide factual information during the process.

But immigration advocates Monday pointed out that the Immigration and Nationality Act already allows immigration judges to issue a waiver to those who were unaware of fraudulent claims made in connection with their application, including if they were a child at the time.

The timing of the search also elicited pushback from Democrats as the Justice Department typically avoids taking major investigative actions like the execution of a warrant within 60 days of an election.

Omar, like her incumbent colleagues running for reelection, is on the ballot in just three weeks.

“Trump has weaponized the @TheJusticeDept, and this is an abuse of power.It is no accident that this raid comes three weeks before an election where Rep. Omar is on the ballot,” Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, wrote on X.

“This is part of the fascist playbook to rile up his supporters in advance of the midterms.”

When Attorney General Todd Blanche was serving as Trump’s personal attorney, he repeatedly argued that any action on that case in the leap up to the contest – even months beforehand – amounted to election interference.

“Trump did not direct the raid on Rep. Omar’s house because there is any reasonable cause. It’s because he thinks his base will turn out for xenophobia and knows they aren’t turning out for his Iran war, price spikes or grift. It’s gross authoritarianism – nothing more,” Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.), wrote on X.

Though the search of Omar’s home has not yet resulted in criminal charges, it’s one of several actions the Justice Department has taken against sitting Democratic lawmakers.

Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) is facing charges related to a scuffle with law enforcement outside a detention facility, with the Trump administration accusing her of attacking immigration agents with her forearms.

The head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Pulte, also referred California Democrats Sen. Adam Schiff and former Rep. Eric Swalwell for charges related to allegations of mortgage fraud that both denied.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), another member of The Squad, pointed out that those searches and other actions routinely targeted Black women, noting mortgage allegations were also made against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) and Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook.

“This is a gross abuse of power & the latest in a decade-long, racist smear campaign against a duly elected Black Congresswoman,” she wrote on X.

“Trump is a coward who is weaponizing his DOJ to fuel hate & intimidate his opponents with baseless attacks like these, just like he’s doing with Rep. McIver, Lisa Cook, and Tish James.”