Trump’s Attacks on Ilhan Omar Played to His Base Before the Midterm Elections. Will Democrats Follow Through on Their Promise to Investigate?
In a pre-dawn raid on October 12, Ilhan Omar recalled being startled awake by Homeland Security agents banging on the door of her Washington DC home. During the raid at least 25 agents searched the modest dwelling for almost five hours and “walked away with 17 items, 10 that were just notebooks and 2 old phones.” The Democratic Representative told Chris Hayes on MSNOW that it felt like “such a bizarre, bizarre thing.” They took a camera her husband had gotten from from his uncle, and she added, “a Somali phrase book for children, which he was using to learn the language.” Omar has received death threats in the past, but that latest escalation forced her family to move out of their DC home. Audiences could clearly see the street number posted on the house, as broadcast footage lingered on the front doorway where agents moved in and out.
CNN’s Jake Tapper reported the raid as a legitimate law-enforcement action saying that Federal agents had a “court-authorized search warrant” as part of a “criminal investigation into alleged immigration fraud.” But The Nationwriter Jeet Heer was far more critical of Trump administration actions, saying the campaign against Omar “stinks to high heaven of partisanship and bigotry.” He added, it’s also part of a larger pattern of “Trump’s weaponization of law enforcement to punish perceived enemies.”
By Sunday, October 18, in a lengthy social media post, Former President Barak Obama called the administration’s attack on Omar “appalling” saying that, “The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president.” He articulated how Trump’sauthoritarian obsession with deporting Omar violated “a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs.”
Though Trump continues to deny that he had anything to do with the raid, such denials come off as little more than his usual gaslighting. He has long been obsessed with Omar, and as Public Citizen reported, the day after the raid Donald Trump said “Ilhan Omar is garbage. … Her friends are garbage. … We don’t want ’em in our country.” He had used this slur a year earlier when he called Omar “garbage” in a Cabinet meeting. Trump has persisted in calling for Omar’s deportation saying in January, that she should be sent “back to Somalia.” In March, Vice President JD Vance joined in declaring, without evidence, that Omar “definitely committed immigration fraud.” Trump’s constant threats to deport her were confirmed when the wife of Trump’s top adviser, Stephen Miller, reacted to the news of the raid by tweeting, “Promise made, promise kept,” before swiftly deleting it.
Michael Tomasky pointed out that Trump regularly rants about Somalis “in a way that can plainly be called racist and can arguably be called fascist.” Trump’s Truth Social post on October 8 characterizing Somalis as conniving bears this out, “The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back! If you need, the Federal Government will come to your rescue.”
The claim that Trump’s law enforcement should go rescue Minnesota from its Somali communities is beyond ludicrous given the determined citizen defense of Minneapolis after Trump unleashed brutal ICE agents who killed 2 humanitarians last winter.
The spectacle of uniformed agents surrounding her house was little more than a staged performance for right-wing media. Not surprisingly Fox News took the opportunity and led with a headline sure to activate stereotypic versions of the Angry African and other people of color; “Somalis in Minnesota unleash fury on Trump after feds raid Ilhan Omar’s DC home.”
Jeet Heer observed that unlike other women and people of color who have become victims of Trump’s “lawless abuse” of power, Omar isn’t getting a full-throated defense from the political and media elite.” That was certainly clear from the first moments when the raid was broadcast over legacy television.
The CBS headline found the raid credible and the charges legitimate with a headline that read, “DHS Secretary Mullin calls Ilhan Omar probe a ‘strong case,’ says agents executed multiple search warrants.” The raid sounded totally above board to CBS. Overall, legacy broadcast coverage was simplistic and formulaic. They used the same pool coverage, interviewed the same sources, and featured plenty of b-roll footage of agents who did not resemble fascist-looking ICE agents, even though they were sent from the same Department of Homeland Security.
The New York Times stands out as the worst example of dishonest reporting. The wordy piece rehashed the charges already investigated, adding some new ones, breathing new life into each one by casting doubt, while proudly claiming that none of their sources could be named:
The search warrant…lists a series of potential immigration crimes under investigation, including false statements and fraud in immigration paperwork, as well as a general conspiracy charge.
This was followed by assurances that the search warrant was scrutinized with a “significant back and forth between prosecutors and the federal judge who eventually approved it.” No context was included regarding the ways the Justice Department has been largely dismantled and reshaped by the Trump Administration and is now far more likely to do Trump’s bidding.
On the other hand, the Washington Post reporting that the political appointees in the first Trump administration had tried to find something on Omar in 2019 but had not been able to find any issues with her immigration paperwork.
As a vocal critic of the Trump Administration, and a Palestinian advocate, Ilhan Omar is a fearless Somali American woman. She is the embodiment of Trump’s favorite punching bags—she is a woman of color, a muslin immigrant, and she wears a head scarf. For years Trump has waged a vituperative campaign of bigotry and revenge against her. As Heer observed, “she excites all the passions of racism, xenophobia, and misogyny that animate Trump and his MAGA movement.”
This piece of theater was a desperate attempt designed to rally his shrinking base before the midterm elections.
Jacobin noted that such attacks won’t stop with Ilham Omar, saying it “illustrates what the United States has come to represent under Donald Trump: An America where the federal government is used to target the president’s perceived enemies.”
This must change. More than 170 House Democrats sent a letter addressed to the Attorney General and the Homeland Security Secretary, sharply condemning Trump’s action against Omar. They called the weaponization of law enforcement against a sitting Member of Congress just 22 days before an election unacceptable.
House Democratic Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Jamie Raskin, promised that if Democrats won the majority, they would use their subpoena power to launch investigations into what they called the “unprecedented political harassment of Ilham Omar.” The investigation would include scrutiny of the communications between Trump, the White House, the DOJ, and the DHS regarding Omar’s targeting. They also plan to draft legislation to withhold federal funding for any immigration probe against her. These actions will be a good start on the long road to bring America back from an authoritarian regime. It’s the duty of every antiauthoritarian and antiracist in American to stand with Ilhan Omar and reverse the growing momentum toward fascism. Elite media would also do well to stop playing to islamophobia and instead represent the needs and concerns of the American people.
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