Representative Ilhan Omar (Democrat-Minnesota) in her office at the Capitol. Photo / Demetrius Freeman, The Washington Post
Over the past two weeks, the leader of the free world has called Representative Ilhan Omar “garbage”, said she shouldn’t be allowed to be a United States congresswoman and stood by as his supporters chanted to “send her back” to her native Somalia.
US President Donald Trump’s barbs directed at the Minnesota Democrat have increased as a fraud scandal implicating dozens of Somalis in her community has made headlines, prompting an immigration crackdown by the Trump Administration.
Omar insists she remains unfazed by the unwanted attention.
“There’s this creepy obsession that he seems to have on me that just feels pretty obnoxious,” she said of Trump in an interview. “I’ve never been one to dwell on the words or attacks of bullies.”
Trump’s latest round of attacks was prompted by a reporter asking him whether Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (Democrat) should resign over a pandemic-era fraud scandal.
Eighty-six people have been charged since investigations began under the Biden administration in 2022. All but eight are of Somali descent.
“Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars … They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country,” Trump said in response to the question during a Cabinet meeting last week.
Omar, the first Somali and Muslim woman to represent Minnesota in Congress, has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the scandal. But Trump, unprompted, next turned his attention to her.
“Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage,” Trump said.
The personal insults continued last week.
During an event in Pennsylvania on Wednesday Trump said that Omar has done “nothing but b***h” since arriving to the US three decades ago from what he characterised as “the worst country in the world”.
Trump said that Omar must get “the hell out”, prompting the crowd to shout in response: “Send her back”. Omar has been a US citizen since 2000.
The episode echoed a 2019 Trump campaign rally, where the crowd chanted the same phrase after the President mentioned Omar.
“He is the chief complainer. So that’s the irony of it all,” Omar said in her Capitol Hill office, a day later.
“I do not b***h. I’m very proud of where I am from and the country that has given me the opportunities that I’ve had.”
Trump has been targeting the Somali community in Minnesota for almost a decade, falsely claiming during a 2016 presidential campaign rally that a large number of refugees were affiliated with Isis and “spreading their extremist views all over our country”.
Once Omar was elected, she became the face of the community - and Trump’s foil.
Elected during the 2018 Midterm that saw Democrats flip the House in a rebuke to Trump’s first administration, Omar gained visibility as part of a group of young, minority and staunchly liberal freshman women known as “The Squad”, who frequently challenged Democratic leadership.
Her outspokenness on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and other issues has at times rankled Democratic and Republican colleagues alike.
Omar was roundly criticised early in her tenure for a social media post that suggested that Israel’s allies in American politics were motivated by money rather than principle. She later apologised.
Once Republicans regained the majority in 2023, they quickly removed Omar from the House Foreign Relations Committee for what then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Republican-California) characterised as “repeated anti-Semitic and anti-American remarks” as a member of the House.
A recent motion to censure Omar over comments she made after the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk failed earlier this year after four Republicans voted with Democrats to stop the House from considering the resolution.
At issue was an interview in which Omar expressed “empathy” for Kirk’s wife and children but chastised those who represented Kirk as someone who wanted a “civil debate”.
In her interview with the Washington Post, Omar said she thinks she finds herself front-of-mind for Trump when he is in search of a scapegoat to distract the public from some of his shortcomings on revitalising the economy and disengaging the US from foreign entanglements.
Omar said it was likely inevitable that Trump would attack her to “change the subject”.
“We understand the game. We know that every time when he has shortcomings, he uses bigotry,” she said, adding that she is “not intimidated or threatened by it”.
And neither is the Somali community, Omar said.
Spending time in her district - which spans outward from the heart of Minneapolis - Omar said many people were telling her to stay strong and that Trump’s attacks on the community did not spur them to cower in fear.
She described her community as “very brave and resilient” because many survived the Somali Civil War, including her own family, which received asylum to the US after fleeing her home country and seeking refuge at a Kenyan refugee camp.
What angers Minnesota Somalis, Omar said, is that bad actors in their community knowingly committed fraud and that has now tarnished all their reputations.
“Minnesota Somalis are also taxpayers,” Omar said. “They’re angry that people are blaming them for the actions of these criminals, because they’re not responsible for it.”
Minnesota federal prosecutors first filed charges in 2022 after finding that dozens of Somali residents took advantage of a generous reimbursement policy offered by state agencies during the pandemic for non-profits or individuals who claimed they were helping feed children.
Federal investigators have found that those meals did not exist and that those charged spent the money lavishly on themselves. Then-attorney-general Merrick Garland described the scheme as the largest pandemic fraud case in the country.
Investigations continue into similar schemes involving reimbursements made to individuals or groups claiming to have helped the homeless and autistic children during the pandemic.
Trump has heavily focused on the fraud investigation for the past several weeks, declaring he would end temporary protected status for Somalis in Minnesota in late November, in part, he said on social media, because “BILLIONS of Dollars are missing”.
Two weeks later, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the department would investigate whether the criminals sent money to the terrorist organisation al-Shabaab, citing an investigative report from City Journal.
Bessent said on CBS News that criminals had donated to Omar’s campaign. The congresswoman acknowledged that happened, but she said her campaign returned the money several years ago upon realising where it came from.
In recent weeks, the Trump Administration has surged Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to Minneapolis and St Paul, known as the Twin Cities, which is home to one of the largest Somali diasporas outside of Africa.
Omar recounted how two US citizens were wrongfully detained over the past week and released once her office intervened.
Another young man was picked up recently near one of Omar’s son’s favourite restaurants, prompting Omar, a mother-of-four, to call her son immediately.
She lectured him hours later when he called back, telling him, “You need to answer the phone. There’s Ice raids, I need to know you’re okay.”
“He said, ‘Mum don’t worry about me,’” she recalled, “‘I’ve got my passport ID, I’m not going to make a scene.’”
Omar said she worries for her children’s safety more than her own, even though death threats directed at her have risen after Trump’s verbal attacks.
Omar said that her upbringing as a minority woman who stood out in the US has contributed to her resiliency.
“The way in which my father would talk to me about bullies, is that often times when people are trying to bully you, they see something in you that they want for themselves. They see some strength, some confidence that they lack,” she said.
“And so, I’ve always remained a very proud and confident person.”
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