White House border czar Tom Homan has publicly confirmed that federal authorities are conducting a criminal investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar over longstanding allegations of immigration and marriage fraud, a case that now involves multiple senior administration officials and the prospect of denaturalization.
Homan made the disclosure during an appearance on Fox News's "The Sunday Briefing," acknowledging for the first time on the record that Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of ICE, is actively working the case. He declined to lay out specifics but left no ambiguity about the seriousness of the probe.
"I'm confirming that ICE is, yeah, look, I said months ago that there's something that's been reported and needs to be looked at," Homan told Fox News.
"If someone committed an immigration violation, if someone committed marriage fraud or anything like that, regardless if they're a congressman or not, no one's above the law. So, I'll leave it at that. We'll let HSI, Homeland Security Investigations, continue the investigation."
The Minnesota Democrat has long faced allegations that she married a man critics allege is her brother as part of an immigration scheme to bring him into the United States. Omar has dismissed the claims as "bigoted lies" and accused President Trump of being obsessed with her. Fox News Digital reached out to Omar's office for comment; no response was included in the network's reporting.
Homan is not the only administration figure speaking publicly about the case. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin went further during a recent podcast appearance, asserting outright that Omar married her brother and that consequences are coming.
"Something's going to happen," Mullin said. "We know that she married her brother to try to bring him to the United States. We know he now lives in London."
Mullin added that the investigation may extend beyond the marriage question itself. "There may be more to this, the whole family migration and possibly some illegal activity for them to come to the United States to begin with," he said. "If we can prove it, that you shouldn't have been here in the first place, we will deport you."
Vice President JD Vance has been equally direct. In a March podcast interview with conservative commentator Benny Johnson, Vance said he had spoken with White House immigration advisor Stephen Miller about potential legal action against Omar.
"We think Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America."
By May, Vance said the Department of Justice was also looking into whether Omar committed immigration fraud, telling reporters: "You read the things about Ilhan Omar... who she married and whether she didn't marry this person or that person. It certainly seems like something fishy is there, but everybody's entitled to equal justice under the law."
The involvement of both DHS and DOJ raises a question the public record does not yet answer: whether these are parallel investigations or a single coordinated effort. Homan's references to HSI and Vance's references to DOJ suggest at minimum that more than one federal agency has eyes on the case. A congressional watchdog previously dismissed a misconduct case against Omar, but DOJ questions have lingered.
Homan did not stop at confirming the investigation. He walked through the legal mechanism the government could use if fraud is proven: denaturalization, the formal process by which a naturalized citizen's citizenship is revoked.
"If someone lies through that process to becoming a citizen, and we can prove they, in fact, lied or misrepresented themselves, we can absolutely denaturalize them," Homan said. "We've done it before many times over the last 40 years I've been around, so it's a process."
Denaturalization is rare but not unprecedented. The government must prove in federal court that a person obtained citizenship through willful misrepresentation or concealment of material facts. If successful, the individual loses U.S. citizenship and becomes subject to removal proceedings, regardless of how long they have lived in the country or what office they hold.
That Homan raised the subject unprompted signals the administration views this not as a political talking point but as a live legal question. ICE has separately withheld FOIA records related to Omar, citing active enforcement proceedings, a move consistent with an open case file.
The fraud allegations against Omar are not new. They center on her first husband, Ahmed Elmi, whom critics have long alleged is her brother. Omar reportedly married Elmi in 2009. The Minnesota Star Tribune reported in 2019 that it could not "conclusively confirm nor rebut" the allegation that Elmi is Omar's sibling, and noted that Omar refused to provide records or allow family interviews, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Social media posts from Omar's own family members have referred to Elmi as a relative, and members of Minnesota's Somali community told Alpha News they were introduced to Elmi as Omar's brother. DHS has also claimed that 50 percent of visas within Minnesota's Somali community are fraudulent, part of a broader review that has intensified scrutiny of the congresswoman's own immigration history, Just The News reported.
Homan framed the investigation as a straightforward law-enforcement matter. "I know things are going on, but I can't give specifics of what's happening," he said. The deliberate restraint, confirming the investigation's existence while withholding details, is consistent with how federal officials discuss active criminal cases.
Still, the public record leaves significant gaps. No charges have been filed. No evidence has been disclosed. No arrest has been made. The specific statutes under investigation have not been identified. Omar has not been formally accused of any crime by a grand jury or a court. The broader fraud scrutiny in Minnesota's Somali community has produced separate cases, including the arrest in Somalia of an alleged ringleader in a $250 million fraud scheme.
What the administration has done is something unusual: multiple officials, from the border czar to the DHS secretary to the vice president of the United States, have spoken publicly and on the record about an investigation into a sitting member of Congress. Homan confirmed it. Mullin asserted the underlying facts as settled. Vance said the administration believes fraud occurred.
Omar, for her part, has offered only a blanket denial. She dismissed the claims as "bigoted lies" on social media and accused Trump of personal fixation. She has not, based on available reporting, addressed the specific evidence cited by investigators or released the records that might settle the question. Her 2025 financial disclosure raised separate questions about her household's reported income.
Homan summed up the administration's posture in five words: "No one's above the law."
If the facts bear out what these officials say they believe, a sitting congresswoman could face the revocation of her citizenship. That is not a political threat. It is a legal process, and the administration says the process is underway.
