The federal search of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, D.C. home has brought renewed attention to an old and publicly documented dispute over her year of birth.
Federal agents searched Omar’s home on October 12 as part of an immigration-related investigation. Reuters reported that the probe concerns immigration paperwork connected to Omar’s childhood and documents completed by her late father. The search was federally authorized, but authorities have not publicly released evidence showing that Omar committed immigration fraud. Omar has denied wrongdoing and described the investigation as politically motivated.
The search took place only weeks before the November election, adding further political attention to the case. Axios described the pre-dawn search as unusual because Justice Department practice has traditionally avoided politically sensitive investigative actions close to an election.
Following the search, an older issue involving Omar’s birth year began circulating again on social media and in news reports.
That issue, however, is not new.
The Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, an official state legislative source, currently lists Omar’s date of birth as October 4, 1982. The same page explicitly states that her birth year had been incorrectly reported as 1981 in other sources. It also records that, as of May 24, 2019, Omar’s congressional staff were working with Wikipedia and the U.S. House to correct the birth year in those public records.
In other words, Omar’s staff did officially seek to correct her publicly listed birth year from 1981 to 1982. But that effort was documented publicly years ago. It was not discovered during this week’s federal search.
The distinction is important because some current social media posts present the 2019 correction as though it were a newly uncovered development. It is not. The correction has long been visible in an official Minnesota legislative record.
What is new is the federal investigation itself.
Investigators are now examining immigration-related records, and the question of Omar’s age has gained renewed attention because critics argue that her precise age could have mattered under the citizenship rules in effect when she became a U.S. citizen. But at this point, no publicly released evidence establishes that the 2019 correction of her birth year was fraudulent or that it was made in order to obtain citizenship improperly.
There is also a separate investigation into Omar’s financial disclosures. Axios reported on October 13 that U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office is examining those disclosures. At the same time, earlier ethics allegations involving her finances had reportedly been reviewed by the Office of Congressional Conduct, which recommended that they be dismissed.
The result is that several different issues are now being discussed at once: the old birth-year correction, the new immigration investigation, and the separate financial-disclosure probe.
For now, the most important distinction is simple: the change of Omar’s publicly listed birth year from 1981 to 1982 is an old and officially documented matter. The federal investigation into her immigration records is new.
Authorities have not yet disclosed what agents found during the search or whether any criminal charges will follow.
Sources: Reuters, Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, Axios, Associated Press
By NJ RADAR Team