Op-Ed by Clayton Wood. contributing writer.
Federal agents searched Ilhan Omar’s home in Washington on Monday. The Justice Department confirmed that Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant as part of an ongoing investigation. It did not name her or say what the probe is about. Reports citing unnamed sources say it concerns immigration paperwork her late father filed. A warrant is not proof of anything. It is a legal tool for investigating suspected conduct. Nobody has been charged.
Yet there are people who are deeply angry. They are posting that it is not allowed to investigate politicians this close to an election. Leave aside that Ilhan Omar if she is found to have come to America fraudulently will be replaced by another Somali leftist due to the enclave she represents, the idea that weaponizing the federal government to persecute political enemies is what Trump is doing is absurd.
Violating the rights of your political enemies by using the power of governmental agencies against them when they have committed no crime? I do recall that…
Start with the IRS. Under the Obama administration, the IRS subjected Tea Party groups to extra scrutiny and delays. When Congress investigated, Lois Lerner’s emails had gaps. Her hard drive “crashed” in 2011, before the investigation, and in March 2014 IRS employees erased 422 backup tapes that may have held thousands of her emails. Much was recovered, and nobody was charged. Citizens were targeted for their politics by their own government, and the price was an apology. You get more of what you incentivize. People are ready to move on from that and think it is old news. Lois Lerner’s crimes were never fully litigated, and she helped her party and her President politically in significant ways.
Then came 2016. The Clinton campaign and the DNC paid for lies from foreign agencies. They literally worked with the Russian intelligence services through a former British agent to use lies as the basis for a smear of Trump. The Steele dossier was disinformation from Moscow, and some people are still ignorant enough to claim that Trump worked with the Russians. Projection and gaslighting, at a global scale. Durham confirmed the Clinton campaign funded it, and the FBI used it to surveil a Trump adviser. Mueller found Russian interference but did not establish a conspiracy between Trump and Russia.
When agents searched Mar-a-Lago in 2022, we were told no one is above the law. The same principle has to apply here. If the Mar-a-Lago search was justified by evidence and lawful procedure, then a properly authorized search of Omar’s home must be judged by the same test. The same people who cheered Melania’s underwear drawer being searched over a crime that did not exist, are now upset that an investigation is finally happening for Omar. No one is above the law, and no one should be beneath its protection.
Omar’s defenders say this is about stripping her citizenship. One wrote that HSI ran the search because investigators want evidence of immigration fraud so they can denaturalize and deport her. That would require a federal court to find she obtained citizenship illegally or hid a material fact. That is a high bar and I will be surprised if it happens. If the evidence meets it, the law worked. If not, the case fails.
This warrant also came out of Washington, DC. A judge in this city is not itching to approve a fishing expedition against a progressive congresswoman. Whoever signed had to be persuaded by a sworn affidavit. Just to remind those I see writing about lawfare today, when you bring fake cases in NYC against a hated Republican? That is lawfare. When you have an 80 percent D area wanting to grab a jury to punish R from a prosecutor who ran on “getting” a politician? That is lawfare.
If a part of TN that was 80 percent R had a prosecutor who said their big goal was to punish Ilhan Omar and then they charged her there? That would be gross political abuse of the legal system. It has only ever happened the other way, Democrats in packed Democrat areas bringing fake cases for real political points.
Ilhan Omar, I believe should never have come, because allowing her family into the United States was a mistake. Her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, was by every credible account a colonel in the army of Siad Barre, a regime that tortured prisoners and bombed its own cities. She has called him an educator. His obituary says colonel. I am not certain he committed war crimes, because I have seen no evidence he did. I am asking whether bringing in a colonel from the army of a mass murdering dictator is a good idea for the United States. Would I think a man like that is trustworthy? No. If the paperwork was false, an investigation can find that. If it was accurate, it will say so.
That question is bigger than one family. In 2007 and 2008, the State Department tested the DNA of about 3,000 mostly Somali, Ethiopian and Liberian refugee applicants who claimed family ties to relatives in the U.S. Fewer than one in five could confirm every relationship they claimed, and the program was suspended. A country that cannot verify who is arriving cannot trust its own process.
For that reason, I do not think we should be admitting people from Somalia. My reason is not just cost. If cost were the issue, I would support admitting the wealthy and turning away the poor, and that is not my argument.
I am deeply suspicious of those who have become wealthy in a regime of brokenness, abuse and exploitation that it is not compatible with our civilization. How can I make such a sweeping claim? Half the Somali immigrants in Minnesota who have been here over ten years still do not speak English well, and 81 percent of Somali-headed households there use welfare, 78 percent after a decade. The entire system that allows people to come to the United States so they can take welfare while not assimilating should be dismantled.
Somalia is already under a full entry ban, in place since June 2025 and expanded in December. As long as vetting is broken and assimilation is not happening, the ban should stay in place.
Fraud is a serious issue. Immigrants who commit it should face the full penalties of the law, including removal. Citizenship obtained by fraud should be revoked in court on real evidence. Most of us are now familiar with feeding our future, and the Learing center, and the myriad other ways massive fraud has been occurring. It must stop.
If Ilhan Omar’s family filed false papers, the law should reach those responsible. If they did not, the investigation should say that too. No one is above the law. That has to mean everyone.
Clayton Wood is a Knoxville attorney and pastor. He is a contributing writer for TriStar Daily.
