It wouldn’t be easy to strip Rep. Ilhan Omar of her citizenship, legal experts say

By Michael Williams, Katelyn Polantz, CNN

(CNN) — The search of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, DC, home by federal law enforcement earlier this week was an extraordinary legal step taken against a sitting congresswoman who is facing reelection.

The Justice Department pushed for an unusually aggressive search of Omar’s home while the congresswoman has said she believes the administration is ultimately seeking to intimidate her.

The government has not yet indicated it will take steps to attempt to strip Omar of her citizenship. But the president himself has said he’d like to see Omar sent to Somalia.

“Fake “Congresswoman” Illhan Omar, a constant complainer who hates the USA, knows everything there is to know. She should be in jail, or even a worse punishment, sent back to Somalia, considered one of the absolutely worst countries in the World,” President Donald Trump posted on Truth social earlier this year. “She could help to MAKE SOMALIA GREAT AGAIN!”

Omar has not been charged with a crime, and the Justice Department has not revealed any evidence against her.

But the path for the federal government to attempt denaturalization wouldn’t be an easy one, legal experts told CNN.

Citizenship has long been considered “a kind of a safe harbor,” said Daniel Kanstroom, a Boston College professor who teaches immigration law. “It’s hard to get, but once you get it, the standard for the government to take it away is really, really high.”

Challenges ahead

Sources told CNN the search was related to an immigration-fraud probe investigating whether Omar’s father lied about her age when she obtained her citizenship in 2000.

Omar maintains she was born in Somalia in 1982 and spent the first years of her life in that country as it was embroiled in a deadly civil war. She has said she came to the US around age 12, and about five years later, she became a US citizen.

The federal investigators are looking at whether Omar lied about her age of 17 when she was applying for citizenship, and potentially whether that may have been a false statement repeated in recent years that could be prosecuted now.

Denaturalization, the process of stripping a naturalized citizen of their citizenship, is an arduous and, until recently, relatively rare process typically reserved for extraordinary lies or omissions made during the naturalization process.

It was used frequently to strip the US citizenships of former Nazis who lied about their wartime activities — the Department of Justice had a unit called the Office of Special Investigations that was formed specifically for this purpose — and has also been used against naturalized members of terrorist and other criminal organizations.

Since Trump took office last year, the Justice Department has said it would prioritize some denaturalization proceedings, which take place as lawsuits filed against citizens in federal court.

Between 2008 and June 12, 2026, 166 denaturalization complaints were filed, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an annual average of less than 10, and a miniscule fraction compared to the hundreds of thousands of people who became newly naturalized every year.

But the second Trump administration has sought to ramp up those numbers as part of its efforts to curb and repeal nearly all forms of immigration — legal and illegal — into the United States. Earlier this month, the government announced it was moving to strip citizenship from 40 naturalized citizens through cases filed since August 21.

Under recent previous administrations, civil denaturalization cases were relatively rare. Between 2008 and 2024, 116 civil denaturalization lawsuits were filed, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an average of less than seven cases a year.

But the second Trump administration has significantly ramped up those numbers as part of its efforts to curb immigration, filing more than 160 civil denaturalization cases this year alone as of September 28, according to TRAC’s analysis.

“It’s a significant increase,” said Texas-based attorney Dan Gividen, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney during the Obama administration who is currently defending about 10 clients from denaturalization.

“For the government to go forward on either a criminal or civil denaturalization back then, the person had to warrant that kind of attention,” Gividen said.

The government could seek to denaturalize someone either through civil proceedings, or by obtaining a criminal conviction for naturalization fraud.

There is no statute of limitations for civil denaturalization proceedings.

The criminal offense, however, is generally subject to a 10-year window where it can be brought after a person becomes a citizen, so it would likely not be applicable in a case against Omar, who obtained her citizenship more than two decades ago.

A case against Omar

Omar has been under criminal investigations in recent years, including before Trump took office last year.

The current federal investigation is looking at whether Omar could have committed immigration fraud, and repeated false statements when filling out government documents, such as a passport, in recent years, and that could be considered a continuation of any suspected fraud.

Further detail of what prosecutors have gathered about Omar’s immigration and government records so far have been presented to a court confidentially and aren’t yet available to the public. However, more than a dozen media organizations and the right-leaning transparency advocacy group Judicial Watch asked a court this week to release more of investigators’ records that supported the search.

While the judge will hear from the Justice Department next week about those transparency requests, the criminal investigation continues.

Federal investigators gaining access to records found in Omar’s DC home is likely to progress slowly, as federal investigators could spend weeks or months trying to obtain some of the congresswoman’s documents.

If Omar were ever to be charged with a crime related to alleged immigration fraud, the Justice Department would have to prove that any misleading statements in immigration documents were made intentionally.

Process that could take years

The question of a possible deportation or denaturalization for Omar would also likely loom far in the future, even if there was evidence found of an immigration fraud crime.

Contested denaturalizations typically take between one to three years to process in district court, not including appeals, said Peter Loblack, an Orlando-based immigration attorney.

Even if a person has their citizenship stripped, deportation is not an immediate given.

A denaturalized citizen would revert to their most recent status — typically, a lawful permanent resident or green card holder — and then the government would have to seek to have them deported through an entirely different proceeding.

That also means that someone who is denaturalized could, theoretically, be renaturalized at a later date and under a different administration.

CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez and Catherine Shoichet contributed to this report.

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