Newly reviewed correspondence reveals that staff for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) arranged to have her listed birth year changed in public legislative records months after she entered Congress, shifting it from 1981 to 1982. The adjustment, which was made in May 2019, has intensified longstanding questions about the congresswoman’s age at the time her father became a naturalized U.S. citizen and whether that timeline supported her account of derivative citizenship.
For years prior to the change, Minnesota’s Legislative Reference Library listed Omar’s date of birth as October 4, 1981. The same year appeared in Wikipedia entries, the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, and coverage from outlets including the BBC.
Those records remained in place throughout Omar’s service in the Minnesota House of Representatives and for several months after her 2018 election to Congress.
In an email dated May 24, 2019, the library’s director stated that staff had been contacted days earlier by Omar’s congressional office. “On May 17, 2019, Library staff were informed by Rep. Omar’s congressional staff that her birth year was incorrect and requested that we change it to 1982,” that email read, according to a report from the New York Post.
The director added that the same staff were simultaneously contacting Wikipedia, the congressional biographical directory, and other sources to update the year. The original 1981 listing, the director explained in a separate note, had been entered because the date was “widely available—in Wikipedia and the Biographical Directory—and so we added that birthdate without documentation.”
The request followed circulation of a video by a political opponent asserting that Omar had misstated her age. Omar has long described obtaining citizenship as a minor through her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, who she said was naturalized in 2000.
“I became a citizen actually before I turned 18… My father became a citizen and so I got my citizenship through that process,” the congresswoman said in a 2018 article with The Intercept.
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If her birth year was in fact 1981, she would have turned 19 that year, placing her outside the age window for automatic derivation of citizenship under the rules then in effect. Critics, including AJ Kern, who challenged Omar in the 2022 Democratic primary, have highlighted the discrepancy.
Kern has argued that Omar’s narrative of becoming a citizen at 17 through her father’s naturalization “is highly likely” inaccurate on both the age and the father’s status. She also previously filed a Federal Election Commission complaint seeking documentation of citizenship, which was dismissed.
Omar’s office did not respond to inquiries about the records at the time of the reporting.
The birth-year revision has drawn fresh attention in light of a federal search executed at Omar’s Washington, D.C.-area home on October 12
Homeland Security Investigations agents carried out a predawn raid under a judicially authorized warrant obtained by the Department of Justice. Officials described the action as part of an ongoing multi-year federal criminal investigation into possible false statements and immigration fraud connected to paperwork completed by Omar’s late father when she was a child.
Sources familiar with the probe have indicated that investigators were examining naturalization and derivative-citizenship records. Agents were observed removing boxes from the residence.
No charges have been announced as if this report, and Omar has denied any wrongdoing.
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[ H/T Trending Politics ]
