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Federal agents search Rep.

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Federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar's home in the Washington, D.C. area Monday morning as part of a criminal investigation, the Justice Department said.

They arrived around 6 a.m. Homeland Security Investigations agents wore HSI jackets, Fox News reported. At the center of it: immigration paperwork Omar's late father filled out when she was a child, according to Fox News and CNBC, each citing people familiar with the inquiry.

A Justice Department spokesperson confirmed that agents "executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice." Officials called it "part of an ongoing federal investigation," according to the BBC, NBC News and the Guardian. The statement didn't say whether the warrant named Omar directly, NBC News reported.

This has been coming for months. Border czar Tom Homan said in September that Homeland Security Investigations was looking into the congresswoman, telling Fox News that "no one's above the law" if immigration or marriage fraud occurred. Vice President JD Vance said in March he believed Omar "definitely committed immigration fraud," the Guardian reported. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said last month an investigation was underway.

Omar has denied it all. Flatly. The allegations center on a years-old, unsubstantiated claim that she married her ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, to help him gain immigration papers, and that Elmi is in fact her brother. A federal prosecutor told Fox News the statute of limitations could complicate any case tied to that 2009 marriage.

Omar fled Somalia's civil war with her family at age eight. Four years followed in a Kenyan refugee camp before she became a U.S. citizen in 2000, at 17, according to NBC News and CNBC. Congress came in 2018, when she was elected alongside Rep. Rashida Tlaib as one of the first two Muslim women in the House.

Twenty-two days remain before the midterm elections, in which Omar is seeking another term representing Minnesota's Fifth District, NBC News reported. Justice Department policy warns prosecutors against timing investigative steps to influence an election. No rule, though, bars action within 60 days of a vote, NBC News said.

Mullin told conservative commentator Benny Johnson last month that investigators believed the family's immigration history warranted a closer look. "We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States," Mullin said. "We know he lives now in London. We feel that there may be more to this... But all of us, we're investigating."

Reporting drawn on: BBC News, The Guardian, CNBC, NBC News, Fox News.
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