Most of us know what year we were born. It’s the first fact we ever own.
Ilhan Omar’s office, it turns out, had to fix hers. And it fixed it after she got to Congress.
For years the record was plain. Her birthdate was listed as October 4, 1981 in the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, on Wikipedia, and by major outlets including the BBC.
That date stayed put through her time in the Minnesota House and her first run for Congress.
Then came the spring of 2019. She’d been in Washington four months. A video from a political rival was going viral, saying Omar wasn’t being straight about her age.
In a May 24, 2019 email reviewed by the New York Post, the director of the library recorded that Omar’s congressional staff had told them her birth year was wrong and asked that it be changed to 1982.
Her team was working at the same time to “correct” the year on Wikipedia and in the official Biographical Directory of Congress.
So she got a year younger. Why would a year matter?
Because of a story Omar has told for a long time.
She says she became an American citizen as a teenager, through her father, when he was naturalized in 2000.
“I became a citizen actually before I turned 18,” she said.
Do the arithmetic.
Born in October 1981, she turned 18 in October 1999 and was 18 for every day of 2000. Born in October 1982, she was 17 for most of it. Citizenship through a naturalized parent generally passes to children under 18.
That one year is the difference between the story holding and the story falling apart.
And there’s more. The Post previously reported that a 2023 search for any record of her father’s naturalization came up empty.
Fairness requires saying this: a correction is not a confession. Children who flee a civil war don’t always arrive with tidy paperwork, and records get fixed. But a correction made by a sitting congresswoman’s staff, right after her age became a public question, invites another question. Why then?
The stakes aren’t academic. The Post notes that if she gave a false birthdate on any official form, such as a passport renewal or loan application, she could face prosecution, since naturalization fraud carries a 10-year statute of limitations.
Before dawn Monday, agents in HSI jackets showed up at Omar’s Washington home around 6 a.m. The Justice Department said Homeland Security Investigations executed a court-approved search warrant as part of an ongoing federal criminal probe.
Fox News Digital reported the investigation centers on immigration paperwork her late father filled out when she was a child. D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro told Fox News her financial disclosures are also under review.
None of this came out of nowhere.
Last month, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said an investigation was underway into whether Omar lied on her immigration forms, and that “something’s going to happen.”
Border czar Tom Homan confirmed ICE is looking into allegations that she married her brother to commit immigration fraud — a reference to her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi.
Her office has flatly denied those allegations. No charges have been filed.
Omar’s answer has been defiance. She called the raid an “attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” and added, “I will not be silenced.” House Democratic leaders called it “deeply disturbing.”
She’s on the ballot November 3. Wire reports put her age at 44. That number was settled in a May 2019 email.
Whether it holds is now up to federal investigators.
The simplest question in American life — when were you born? — has become the hardest one in hers.
