Ilhan Omar lied about becoming citizen as a minor through her father—she was 18: report

A former Congressional candidate in Minnesota has raised concerns about Rep Ilhan Omar’s naturalization to the US, saying that the Democrat lawmaker lied about her birth year. 

Speaking with Alpha News’ Liz Collin, AJ Kern said that in 2019, "I was looking at something about Ilhan Omar on the internet, and it occurred to me to look at her birth year. I don’t know why, or birthday, and so I used an age calculator and found out that she was actually 18 in the year 2000 when her father became eligible to apply for citizenship. She claimed that she became a citizen at the age of 17. 

Ilhan Omar claimed in a 2018 interview with The Intercept "I became a citizen actually before I turned 18. My father became a citizen and so I got my citizenship through that process." Kern has laid out how of the three pathways to citizenship for foreign-born minors, Omar would not have been eligible for any of them due to her age or her parents’ citizenship status at the time. 

Kern continued, "So to me, this was like, completely a red flag that I had figured out that she actually wasn’t a minor when her father could apply for naturalization. So it kind of blows a hole in her story that she obtained naturalization or citizenship when she was 17. On top of that, not anyone has ever verified her citizenship, not the Minnesota Secretary of State, the FEC, or Congress itself." She said that candidates sign an "affidavit, that’s the certification statement," attesting citizenship. 

In an archived version of Ilhan Omar’s page in the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library uncovered by Kern, Omar’s birth date is listed as October 4, 1981. However, an updated version of the page lists her birth year as 1982. 

Kern said, "I believe that the whole narrative that Ilhan Omar became a citizen at the age of 17, that narrative that’s documented has been sold for so long that people have bought into it and they believe it. But where’s the documentation? No one has seen her official naturalization records. No one, not the Minnesota Secretary of State, not the Federal Election Commission, not Congress, and there is enough evidence now, especially in changing her birth year. I mean, who does that? Who goes to that effort of, oh, I'm in Congress now, and I've just noticed that my birth year is incorrect. No, that's a red flag." 

Kern called for the initiation of a congressional inquiry, "just because there is enough evidence that calls into question whether she’s actually a citizen, and that this is so important that we do not have a foreign nationalist, a Somali nationalist, occupying a seat in Congress, affecting laws that govern the United States of America."