One prominent editorial board this week demanded an end to the federal investigation of Rep. Ilhan Omar. “If her naturalization can be revisited,” it wrote, “it suggests that no naturalized citizen is safe.” Those are, it said, “the tactics of authoritarian societies.”
That gets the law exactly backward. A naturalized citizen who told the truth has nothing to fear. A person who lied to get citizenship never lawfully had it in the first place.
Void from the start
Lawyers have a Latin phrase for it: void ab initio — void from the beginning. If a lie gets you a benefit you were never entitled to, the benefit was never really yours. The lie poisoned the whole process.
Federal immigration law says exactly this. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1451, U.S. attorneys must go to federal court to revoke any naturalization that was “illegally procured or … procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.” And when a court revokes it, the revocation takes effect “as of the original date of the order and certificate.” The law doesn’t say the citizenship ends today. It says the citizenship is treated as though it was never validly granted.
The Supreme Court has been just as clear. In Fedorenko v. United States (1981), it held that “there must be strict compliance with all the congressionally imposed prerequisites to the acquisition of citizenship,” and that failing any one of them “renders the certificate of citizenship ‘illegally procured.'” A person who didn’t qualify never became a citizen, no matter what the certificate says.
And it reaches beyond the person who lied. Under § 1451(d), anyone who claims citizenship through a parent whose naturalization is revoked for fraud “shall be deemed to have lost and to lose his citizenship.” Citizenship built on a false foundation falls with it.
What is being investigated
Omar came to the United States as a refugee from Somalia in 1995 and became a citizen in 2000. She has said she got her citizenship through her father’s naturalization, when she was still a minor.
Her age is one question. Under the law in effect in 2000, a child could become a citizen through a parent’s naturalization only if the child was under 18. Federal investigators are examining her family’s 1990s refugee and naturalization paperwork, including whether her age and other facts were stated truthfully. A federal grand jury in Minnesota has subpoenaed her relatives, and agents searched her Washington home this month. The probe also revisits her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi.
Omar has not been charged with anything. She denies any wrongdoing and calls the investigation politically motivated. No court or agency has found that she or her family lied. Earlier reviews ended without charges.
The marriage, which came nine years after she became a citizen, could not have been how she obtained citizenship. If it was a fraud, it would be a separate crime. The question that decides her citizenship is what was said on the paperwork in the 1990s — hers and her father’s.
Her father’s paperwork
The second question is about her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, who died in 2020.
He was not simply a civilian fleeing a war. According to his 2020 obituary in Sahan Journal, a Minnesota news outlet that covers the Somali community, he got “a military education in Russia,” rose to “colonel,” and “led a successful regiment” in the 1977-78 war with Ethiopia. His “prestigious career in the military ended in 1991 after the Barre regime was ousted.” In the United States, the obituary said, he drove a cab and worked for the post office: “no longer the affluent colonel he was in Mogadishu.” Profiles of Omar have described his work before the war as training teachers.
The regime he served was Siad Barre’s dictatorship. It ruled under what it called “scientific socialism,” a doctrine built on Marxism, through a single legal party, the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party, and it was armed by the Soviet Union until 1977.
American immigration law asks about exactly this kind of history. The naturalization application asks whether an applicant has ever served in a military unit and whether he has ever been a member of or associated with any Communist or totalitarian party. Federal law bars naturalizing anyone who belonged to a Communist or other totalitarian party in the 10 years before applying, with narrow exceptions such as membership that was involuntary or needed to get a job or food. Refugee law excludes anyone who took part in persecuting others.
Investigators are reportedly examining whether he disclosed his military service. His forms have not been made public, and no court has ruled. But if a colonel in a Marxist dictatorship’s army hid that career to win refugee status or citizenship, that is concealment of a material fact. And under § 1451(d), if his citizenship falls, the citizenship his daughter says she received through him falls with it.
If it’s true, it must be enforced
If the government proves that Omar’s citizenship rested on a false statement — that she was older than her papers said, that her father hid his military past, or that her family’s applications misrepresented who they were — then the law is not optional. Her citizenship was never lawfully hers, and a federal court should say so.
That isn’t authoritarianism. Authoritarian regimes strip citizenship from critics by decree. In America, the government must file in federal court and prove its case. The Supreme Court in Schneiderman v. United States (1943) set the bar: evidence that is “clear, unequivocal, and convincing.” The lie must also have mattered; under Kungys v. United States (1988), it has to have had a “natural tendency” to influence the decision. A judge, not a president, decides. Those safeguards are exactly why no honest naturalized citizen has anything to fear.
Why this protects legitimate citizens
Millions of Americans became citizens the hard way. They waited years, filled out every form truthfully, studied for the civics test, and raised their right hand to take the oath. Their citizenship is worth something because it means the same thing for everyone: you qualified, and you told the truth.
Every citizenship obtained by a lie cheapens theirs. If fraud carries no consequence as long as enough time passes, or as long as the person becomes famous enough, then the oath is just paperwork and the truth is optional. That is the real threat to naturalized Americans.
Criticizing the White House doesn’t earn anyone a pass, and it doesn’t make anyone a target. The only question is whether the law was followed.
If the evidence shows the Omar family lied, the courts should enforce the law as written. If it doesn’t, she keeps her citizenship like every other honest American. Either way, the investigation should continue to the end. Protecting the value of American citizenship means protecting it from fraud.
This is opinion, separate from our news coverage. It also appears in San Diego Newsline.
Sources: 8 U.S.C. § 1451 — Revocation of naturalization (a), (d) · Fedorenko v. United States, 449 U.S. 490 (1981) · Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U.S. 118 (1943) · Kungys v. United States, 485 U.S. 759 (1988) · USCIS Policy Manual — Children of U.S. citizens (Child Citizenship Act, former derivation rules) · Associated Press — Rep. Ilhan Omar's phone seized and relatives subpoenaed in criminal probe (Oct. 15, 2026) · The National Desk — Investigation into Ilhan Omar intensifies after home searched, subpoenas issued (Oct. 2026) · Sahan Journal — 'He was loved by everyone': The Somali community remembers Nur Omar Mohamed (June 20, 2020) · Library of Congress Country Studies — Somalia: scientific socialism under Siad Barre · 8 U.S.C. § 1424 — Prohibition on naturalization of members of Communist or totalitarian parties · 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42) — refugee definition (persecutor exclusion)
