Federal agents allegedly dug through Rep. Ilhan Omar’s trash for DNA days before searching her Washington home, as sources say the immigration-fraud case runs deeper than known.
Homeland Security Investigations agents aggressively searched the Minnesota Democrat’s Washington, D.C., residence on Monday and walked out with her cellphone, notebooks, personal computers, and passport, according to reporting that also describes a quieter step taken days earlier.
Daily Mail reporting cites inside sources who told NewsNation that investigators went “dumpster diving” through discarded garbage tied to Omar in hopes of collecting DNA from the congresswoman and her family before the home entry.
The probe is being coordinated by Homeland Security Investigations’ Minneapolis office, the investigative arm of ICE. A federal judge signed off on the residence search after investigators presented messages pulled from a phone belonging to Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor, whose device had been seized earlier this year.
What those messages say still has not been made public. The seizures at Omar’s home, and the reported trash search that came first, sit inside a wider immigration-fraud focus that has trailed the 44-year-old lawmaker for years.
Former FBI special agent Tracy Walder, speaking on NewsNation’s On Balance, said discarded trash can be a straightforward place to look when DNA is the goal.
"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."
Walder added that agents generally do not need a warrant for material left in a public place.
"You don’t need a warrant to really do any of that, as long as it’s in a public place."
She also noted the open-ended nature of such a search: investigators could be hunting more than one kind of lead in the same pile of refuse. Former federal prosecutor Shan Wu questioned how DNA would fit a classic fraud case, framing it as more of a “whodunnit” tool for placing someone at a scene than a direct proof of paperwork crimes.
Sources speaking to NewsNation still called DNA “critical” to the current effort. They also said more than a dozen other raids unfolded at the same time as the D.C. home search, and that evidence is expected to go before a grand jury.
The exact charge sheet, if any, has not been laid out in public. Reporting around the raids points to immigration-fraud allegations, including whether Omar’s age was listed as 17 rather than 18 on a citizenship application and whether a past marriage was used to help someone else secure status.
Authorities have been seeking immigration records involving Omar and her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, on the age question. Omar obtained U.S. citizenship in 2000. In September 2018 she said she became a citizen “before I turned 18” through her father’s naturalization.
Separate, longstanding claims hold that she married Somali community leader Ahmed Elmi in 2009 to help him gain citizenship, an allegation she has denied as “racist.” President Donald Trump has repeated related claims; the justice system, not campaign rhetoric, is where any proof must land.
Readers tracking the same cluster of questions have already seen federal work on the alleged marriage-fraud records and on how far criminal exposure might reach if material misrepresentation is proved.
Federal prosecutors have issued subpoenas naming some family members, sources said. No charging document against Omar herself is described in the available accounts, and the full scope of the “federal criminal investigation” remains unclear.
The New York Times reported that a federal judge approved the home search only after seeing the Sahra Noor messages. Agents then took the congresswoman’s devices and passport from the D.C. house in a judicially authorized operation, not a freelance fishing trip.
That sequence matters. A warrant-backed search of a member of Congress’s residence is a high bar. Pairing it with a reported pre-raid trash collection for DNA signals investigators believed biological evidence could lock identities to other material already in hand.
Coverage of the HSI search of Omar’s D.C. home and of the cellphone taken in the immigration-fraud raid has followed the same enforcement thread, devices first, then the larger paper and status questions.
Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department looked at Omar and later closed the matter. Parts of the inquiry were later revived and expanded under President Trump. Timing notes in the reporting place the recent evidence-gathering about three weeks before her re-election bid, a window that also brushes against the department’s unwritten 60-day caution about steps that could sway voters.
Omar answered on X on Thursday by casting the entire push as personal payback.
"Trump and his administration have been after me since I arrived in Congress."
She added that she has “always stood up to him and that will never change,” and closed with a personal attack on the president. She has also described the search as a “campaign of political intimidation.”
Trump, asked about the scrutiny, separated his opinion of the congresswoman from the legal machinery.
"Well, I understand they’re looking at her very carefully. I’ve always found her to be totally crooked, personally, but that has nothing to do with me."
He said again that the matter sits with the Justice Department and that he has “nothing to do with it.” Stripping citizenship, the reporting notes, would require a DOJ civil lawsuit proving material misrepresentation in the naturalization process, an uphill legal climb, not a press-conference stunt.
Related public debate has already included DHS comments on the “married her brother” claim and deportation talk, and warnings from House leadership that proven citizenship fraud should mean jail and removal. Those arguments only sharpen if lab work, phone data, and immigration files start pointing the same direction.
Somali-born and Minnesota’s representative since 2019, Omar is seeking a fifth term while this cloud hangs over her household and extended family. The Minneapolis HSI office’s role ties the D.C. search back to the state she represents and to a community already under a harsh spotlight over fraud cases of other kinds.
Open questions remain blunt. What DNA, if any, came out of the trash, and whose was it? What did Sahra Noor’s messages actually say? Which addresses and which relatives were hit in the simultaneous raids? Which family names appear on the subpoenas? Has a grand jury heard the case yet, or is that still only an expectation?
Until charging papers or a courtroom filing answers those points, the public has a warrant-backed home search, a reported pre-raid trash trawl for DNA, device and passport seizures, and a fraud theory built around age, marriage, and naturalization history. That is already more process than a routine political spat.
Taxpayers fund immigration law for a reason. When federal agents pull passports and dig through garbage for DNA on a sitting member of Congress, the country is entitled to hard proof, and to the same rules for the powerful that apply to everyone else.