Americans should rise up in defense of Somali immigrant Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) after federal officials searched her house, says Bill Kristol, the former neoconservative and current NeverTrump leader.
“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.” Kristol posted on X after the search was announced.
Kristol also offered an excuse for possible citizenship fraud by Omar, who is reportedly the daughter of a former general in a Somali warlord army. He wrote:
Trump’s DHS raids Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home because of paperwork filled out by her father in 1995. The Trumpists are desperate. But loyalists at powerful agencies will obey orders. Desperation is dangerous.
The evidence is murky, but Omar may have lied about her birth date to get automatic citizenship as a dependent of her father. But she has also been accused of aiding widespread welfare fraud by Somali-managed businesses in Minnesota.
“I’m ok,” Omar tweeted midday, adding:
Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.
In 2017, Kristol said the federal government should import migrants to replace most Americans, saying:
[I hope] this thing isn’t being videotaped or ever shown anywhere. Whatever tiny, pathetic future I have is going to totally collapse. You can make a case that America has been great because every — I think John Adams said this — basically if you are in free society, a capitalist society, after two or three generations of hard work everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled — whatever. Then, luckily, you have these waves of people coming in from Italy, Ireland, Russia, and now Mexico, who really want to work hard and really want to succeed and really want their kids to live better lives than them and aren’t sort of clipping coupons or hoping that they can hang on and meanwhile grew up as spoiled kids and so forth. In that respect, I don’t know how this moment is that different from the early 20th century.
The search of Omar’s house is part of a criminal investigation, said the Department of Justice.
The Washington Post reported:
A senior Trump administration official confirmed that Omar’s residence was raided Monday as part of an investigation into possible criminal immigration fraud. The official, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the investigation and said the investigation is being led internally by White House deputy homeland security adviser Anthony Salisbury, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow, and Attorney General Todd Blanche.
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Born in Somalia, Omar fled the country’s civil war with her family when she was a young girl, spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp, and immigrated to the United States at age 12 in 1995. Omar became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000. She was elected to Congress in 2018.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin last month said that “something’s going to happen” and that there is an “ongoing investigation.” Mullin told conservative commentator Benny Johnson, without providing evidence, “There may be more to this, the whole family migration and possibly some illegal activity for them to come to the United States to begin with.”
“If we can prove it that you shouldn’t have been here in the first place, we’ll deport you,” Mullin said.
