{"id":165107,"date":"2026-10-15T13:27:53","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T21:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/15\/trump-administration-raiding-ilhan-omars-house-just-to-see-where-it-leads\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T13:27:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T21:27:53","slug":"trump-administration-raiding-ilhan-omars-house-just-to-see-where-it-leads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/15\/trump-administration-raiding-ilhan-omars-house-just-to-see-where-it-leads\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Administration Raiding Ilhan Omar\u2019s House Just To \u2018See Where It Leads\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Right-wing media have floated weird conspiracy theories about Rep. Ilhan Omar and her immigration status for years, including loony claims that she married her own brother. There\u2019s no evidence of that at all, mind you, though you wouldn\u2019t know it if you perused Twitter.<\/p>\n

These insane, overtly racist attacks on the congresswoman long remained cloistered within right-wing echo chambers, serving as red meat entrees for their legion of mouth breathers. But the Trump administration raided her home the other day. It represents a severe escalation on the part of Trump\u2019s Justice Department, which has become something of a fascist edition of Jumanji, turning the power of conservative imagination into weaponized prosecutions.<\/p>\n

But the most unsettling revelation from this probe appears in this unassuming paragraph from NBC\u2019s coverage<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The investigation is seeking information to see where it leads, the source said. For example, if records, representations related to age and immigration status contain false information, that would provide material for investigators to scrutinize further. They could also examine communications related to such matters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nope! Prosecutors cannot pursue open-ended fishing expeditions to go looking for a crime. Or at least they aren\u2019t supposed to. It\u2019s part of Robert Jackson\u2019s famous warning against \u201cpicking the man and then searching the law books.\u201d When they\u2019re conducting raids before developing a theory of the case, they\u2019ve put the cart in front of the horse, where the cart is an armored vehicle.<\/p>\n

A federal grand jury in Minnesota issued about a dozen subpoenas last week, including to members of Omar\u2019s family. Grand juries enjoy broad latitude to issue subpoenas \u2014 the Supreme Court has said a grand jury \u201ccan investigate merely on suspicion that the law is being violated, or even just because it wants assurance that it is not<\/a>.\u201d But it\u2019s more ethically fraught when the government uses a grand jury as a sock puppet to engage in the sort of arbitrary fact-gathering on its behalf that Jackson warned about.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Homeland Security Investigations searched Omar\u2019s Washington, D.C. home<\/a> on what a DOJ spokesperson called \u201ca judicially authorized search warrant.\u201d<\/p>\n

A search warrant should<\/em> require probable cause tied to some specific crime. Whichever judge issued the search warrant should have checked for that, and \u201cwe want to see where it leads\u201d is not a recipe for an affidavit that passes muster. The Fourth Amendment says \u201cno Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,\u201d particularly describing what\u2019s to be seized. The judge must find a fair probability that evidence of a crime is sitting in the specific place the government wants to search. Note that it\u2019s evidence of a crime<\/em>\u2026 as in, you need the crime first. \u201cWe\u2019d like to poke around and see if there\u2019s a crime\u201d is the precise scenario the Fourth Amendment exists to prevent, and any judge who signed off without more dropped the ball.<\/p>\n

Though perhaps we\u2019re reading too much into the term \u201cjudicially.\u201d It suggests that a judge actually evaluated the government\u2019s request, but immigration officials have taken the stance that they don\u2019t need judges to sign off on warrants<\/a>, so maybe \u201cjudicially\u201d is more of a rhetorical flourish for DOJ spokespeople these days.<\/p>\n

In any event, NBC\u2019s source is laying out the opposite of probable cause \u2014 at least as of Wednesday \u2014 which casts a lot of doubt on that Monday warrant.<\/p>\n

Omar was naturalized in 2000 at the age of 17. Under 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 3291<\/a>, the federal crimes covering naturalization and citizenship fraud carry a 10-year statute of limitations. Whatever is or isn\u2019t wrong with the paperwork filled out on behalf of a child refugee a quarter century ago, it stopped being prosecutable around the time of the iPhone 4. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has gone on record that he believes \u201cthere\u2019s no expiration\u201d to lying on an application, but he is not a lawyer\u2026 and it shows. Civil proceedings are one thing, but once grand juries and raids enter the picture, this matter falls squarely within the bounds of criminal law where the statute of limitations very much applies.<\/p>\n

The administration seems to be searching \u2014 without any reason to believe it exists \u2014 for a bootstrap. They want to find some sort of recent sworn statement that they can claim brings the fraud into the present. But that\u2019s not following a crime, so much as shopping for one. <\/p>\n

If NBC\u2019s source is wrong, and the government has probable cause of a specific crime, this would be the time to unveil it. Because right now it looks like they went off half-cocked to harass a member of Congress based on a hunch.<\/p>\n

But, of course, the real reason the government took this seemingly premature leap has everything to do with ginning up lurid headlines about Omar sooner rather than later. The department\u2019s own rulebook may say that \u201cFederal prosecutors and agents may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps<\/a>, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election,\u201d but, well\u2026<\/p>\n

Early voting in Minnesota starts tomorrow<\/a>.[1]<\/sup><\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Omar fled a civil war at 8 and spent a few years in a Kenyan refugee camp before finally coming to the United States. Donald Trump is on record whining that Omar \u201ccomes in from a country without laws\u201d and then has the nerve to say \u201cI have a constitutional right.\u201d But that\u2019s why she came here! To live in a country of laws, where the government is not supposed to be allowed to rummage through your house as part of a conspiracy theory scavenger hunt.<\/p>\n

DOJ issues subpoenas in investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar\u2019s immigration status, including to her family members<\/a> [NBC News]<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> And mail-in ballots have already gone out, so some people have been casting votes for almost a month, even if the actual \u201cearly voting\u201d period starts tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Trump Administration Raiding Ilhan Omar\u2019s House Just To \u2018See Where It Leads\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Right-wing media have floated weird conspiracy theories about Rep. Ilhan Omar and her immigration status for years, including loony claims that she married her own brother. There\u2019s no evidence of that at all, mind you, though you wouldn\u2019t know it if you perused Twitter.<\/p>\n

These insane, overtly racist attacks on the congresswoman long remained cloistered within right-wing echo chambers, serving as red meat entrees for their legion of mouth breathers. But the Trump administration raided her home the other day. It represents a severe escalation on the part of Trump\u2019s Justice Department, which has become something of a fascist edition of Jumanji, turning the power of conservative imagination into weaponized prosecutions.<\/p>\n

But the most unsettling revelation from this probe appears in this unassuming paragraph from NBC\u2019s coverage<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The investigation is seeking information to see where it leads, the source said. For example, if records, representations related to age and immigration status contain false information, that would provide material for investigators to scrutinize further. They could also examine communications related to such matters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nope! Prosecutors cannot pursue open-ended fishing expeditions to go looking for a crime. Or at least they aren\u2019t supposed to. It\u2019s part of Robert Jackson\u2019s famous warning against \u201cpicking the man and then searching the law books.\u201d When they\u2019re conducting raids before developing a theory of the case, they\u2019ve put the cart in front of the horse, where the cart is an armored vehicle.<\/p>\n

A federal grand jury in Minnesota issued about a dozen subpoenas last week, including to members of Omar\u2019s family. Grand juries enjoy broad latitude to issue subpoenas \u2014 the Supreme Court has said a grand jury \u201ccan investigate merely on suspicion that the law is being violated, or even just because it wants assurance that it is not<\/a>.\u201d But it\u2019s more ethically fraught when the government uses a grand jury as a sock puppet to engage in the sort of arbitrary fact-gathering on its behalf that Jackson warned about.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Homeland Security Investigations searched Omar\u2019s Washington, D.C. home<\/a> on what a DOJ spokesperson called \u201ca judicially authorized search warrant.\u201d<\/p>\n

A search warrant should<\/em> require probable cause tied to some specific crime. Whichever judge issued the search warrant should have checked for that, and \u201cwe want to see where it leads\u201d is not a recipe for an affidavit that passes muster. The Fourth Amendment says \u201cno Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,\u201d particularly describing what\u2019s to be seized. The judge must find a fair probability that evidence of a crime is sitting in the specific place the government wants to search. Note that it\u2019s evidence of a crime<\/em>\u2026 as in, you need the crime first. \u201cWe\u2019d like to poke around and see if there\u2019s a crime\u201d is the precise scenario the Fourth Amendment exists to prevent, and any judge who signed off without more dropped the ball.<\/p>\n

Though perhaps we\u2019re reading too much into the term \u201cjudicially.\u201d It suggests that a judge actually evaluated the government\u2019s request, but immigration officials have taken the stance that they don\u2019t need judges to sign off on warrants<\/a>, so maybe \u201cjudicially\u201d is more of a rhetorical flourish for DOJ spokespeople these days.<\/p>\n

In any event, NBC\u2019s source is laying out the opposite of probable cause \u2014 at least as of Wednesday \u2014 which casts a lot of doubt on that Monday warrant.<\/p>\n

Omar was naturalized in 2000 at the age of 17. Under 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 3291<\/a>, the federal crimes covering naturalization and citizenship fraud carry a 10-year statute of limitations. Whatever is or isn\u2019t wrong with the paperwork filled out on behalf of a child refugee a quarter century ago, it stopped being prosecutable around the time of the iPhone 4. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has gone on record that he believes \u201cthere\u2019s no expiration\u201d to lying on an application, but he is not a lawyer\u2026 and it shows. Civil proceedings are one thing, but once grand juries and raids enter the picture, this matter falls squarely within the bounds of criminal law where the statute of limitations very much applies.<\/p>\n

The administration seems to be searching \u2014 without any reason to believe it exists \u2014 for a bootstrap. They want to find some sort of recent sworn statement that they can claim brings the fraud into the present. But that\u2019s not following a crime, so much as shopping for one. <\/p>\n

If NBC\u2019s source is wrong, and the government has probable cause of a specific crime, this would be the time to unveil it. Because right now it looks like they went off half-cocked to harass a member of Congress based on a hunch.<\/p>\n

But, of course, the real reason the government took this seemingly premature leap has everything to do with ginning up lurid headlines about Omar sooner rather than later. The department\u2019s own rulebook may say that \u201cFederal prosecutors and agents may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps<\/a>, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election,\u201d but, well\u2026<\/p>\n

Early voting in Minnesota starts tomorrow<\/a>.[1]<\/sup><\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Omar fled a civil war at 8 and spent a few years in a Kenyan refugee camp before finally coming to the United States. Donald Trump is on record whining that Omar \u201ccomes in from a country without laws\u201d and then has the nerve to say \u201cI have a constitutional right.\u201d But that\u2019s why she came here! To live in a country of laws, where the government is not supposed to be allowed to rummage through your house as part of a conspiracy theory scavenger hunt.<\/p>\n

DOJ issues subpoenas in investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar\u2019s immigration status, including to her family members<\/a> [NBC News]<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> And mail-in ballots have already gone out, so some people have been casting votes for almost a month, even if the actual \u201cearly voting\u201d period starts tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Trump Administration Raiding Ilhan Omar\u2019s House Just To \u2018See Where It Leads\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right-wing media have floated weird conspiracy theories about Rep. Ilhan Omar and her immigration status for years, including loony claims that she married her own brother. There\u2019s no evidence of that at all, mind you, though you wouldn\u2019t know it if you perused Twitter. These insane, overtly racist attacks on the congresswoman long remained cloistered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":165083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}