A single year separates two birthdates in the records of Rep. Ilhan Omar, and the Justice Department is now studying which one is correct.
Some documents list the Minnesota Democrat’s birthdate as Oct. 4, 1981. Others give the same day in 1982.
That gap carries legal weight. Omar says she became a U.S. citizen at age 17, when her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, was naturalized.
If the 1981 date is accurate, she would have been an adult when her father received citizenship and would not have qualified for the minor benefit.
Omar, who was born in Somalia, rejects the idea that the inquiry is routine. In a new interview with The Nation, she pointed her finger at President Donald Trump.
“Trump has an unhealthy and creepy obsession with me. I represent everything Trump and today’s Republican Party seem to despise,” Omar told The Nation.
She then described herself to the outlet. “I’m a woman, an immigrant, a refugee, a Muslim woman who wears a hijab, and someone who refuses to be intimidated into silence.”
Omar said Trump and other Republicans aim “racism, Islamophobia, conspiracy theories, and lies” at her. She said they do it to divert attention from “their own failures.”
The Justice Department holds the authority to revoke her citizenship if investigators find problems with the naturalization papers filed in 2000. Federal officials have not announced any such finding.
Investigators are examining whether Omar gained citizenship that year under a false name or an incorrect birthdate. The inquiry also covers her father’s legal status in the United States.
Federal agents raided Omar’s Washington, D.C., home on Oct. 12.
Nine days later, on Oct. 21, the Justice Department filed a court document that named her “Congresswoman Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar.”
Omar linked the scrutiny to an earlier episode in American politics.
She compared Trump’s interest in her background to his demand that then-President Barack Obama produce his birth certificate.
Obama released it in 2011 to put down rumors that he was born in Kenya.
Omar then spoke about Obama directly.
“President Obama knows the world of right-wing conspiracies better than anyone. In many ways, the conspiracy world I find myself in was created around him,” she told The Nation.
She continued: “That is why he can so clearly see the purpose and contradictions of the lies being told about me. He knows that no amount of evidence or facts will ever be enough for these trolls, because they are not after the truth. The conspiracy itself is what drives them.”
Obama’s own administration looked into Omar before. His Justice Department investigated her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Elmi, whom reports describe as her alleged brother.
That investigation began in 2016. Investigators sought to determine whether Omar married her brother so he could obtain a green card.
The probe ended without charges. Authorities closed it after concluding that the alleged crime fell outside a five-year statute of limitations.
The current investigation reaches back to the same period of her life. Her 2000 naturalization, her 2009 marriage and the 2016 inquiry now sit alongside the October raid.
Omar remains under investigation by the Justice Department. Her congressional office has made no announcement that she will step aside.
