Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) congressional staff asked Minnesota officials to change her listed birth year from 1981 to 1982 in May 2019, according to emails reviewed by the New York Post.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) congressional staff asked Minnesota officials to change her listed birth year from 1981 to 1982 in May 2019, according to emails reviewed by the New York Post.
The request came several months after Omar entered Congress and followed a political opponent’s video questioning her age. The discrepancy has drawn renewed attention after federal agents searched her Washington, DC, home Monday as part of an ongoing investigation.
Omar’s biography in the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library previously listed her birthday as October 4, 1981. That date appeared throughout her service in the Minnesota House and remained on the library’s website during the first months of her congressional term, according to the Post.
In a May 24, 2019, email, the library’s director described how Omar’s office requested the revision.
“On May 17, 2019, Library staff were informed by Rep. Omar’s congressional staff that her birth year was incorrect and requested that we change it to 1982,” the director wrote.
The effort extended beyond the state legislative website, according to the email.
“Rep. Omar’s congressional staff are working with Wikipedia and with the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress and other sources to correct her birth year on those sites,” the director wrote. “As of today, the birth year has not been corrected on the two sites I mentioned.”
The library’s director also explained that the original entry had not been supported by documentation. Omar has said she became a U.S. citizen in 2000 through her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, after her family arrived in the United States from Somalia in 1995.
“I became a citizen actually before I turned 18,” Omar told the Intercept in September 2018. “My father became a citizen and so I got my citizenship through that process.”
The one-year difference matters to that account. Someone born October 4, 1981, would have turned 18 in October 1999. Someone born October 4, 1982, would have remained 17 until October 2000.
Federal guidance says citizenship claims involving events before February 27, 2001, are assessed under the law in effect at the time. The rules for deriving citizenship through a parent included age requirements and other conditions, establishing eligibility would require the relevant family and immigration records.
AJ Kern, who unsuccessfully challenged Omar in Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District Democrat primary in 2022, told the Post Tuesday that she questioned both Omar’s age at the time and her account of her father’s naturalization.
“She claims her citizenship narrative is that she derived citizenship through her father when she was a 17-year-old minor,” Kern said.
“For derivative citizenship, two things have to be true — one, her father had to naturalize; and two, she still had to be a minor — and what I have found is that it’s highly likely that neither of those things are true,” she alleged.
Kern’s allegations do not establish that Omar obtained citizenship improperly. The emails quoted in the report also do not show that Omar submitted a false birthdate on a citizenship application. Kern said she previously pursued a complaint seeking proof of Omar’s citizenship, but that the effort did not advance because a judge found that vetting congressional members was Congress’s responsibility.
Asked what investigators might have sought during Monday’s search, Kern suggested Omar’s citizenship documents and her father’s naturalization record. That was her assessment, rather than a confirmed account of what agents were authorized to seize.
Homeland Security Investigations conducted the search under a warrant obtained by the Justice Department. The department confirmed that the operation was part of an ongoing federal investigation but did not publicly detail its basis.
Reuters separately reported, citing a person familiar with the investigation, that the inquiry concerns alleged immigration fraud and includes paperwork completed by Omar’s late father when she was a child.
Omar has repeatedly denied immigration fraud allegations. In a statement posted Monday, she accused President Donald Trump of using federal law enforcement against her.
“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,” she wrote.
