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

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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!”

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Exclusive: Judge limited Justice Department access to Rep. Ilhan Omar’s records in sprawling immigration fraud probe

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.”

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.

Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP/Getty Images

Law used to kick out Nazis could be used to strip citizenship from many more Americans

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.

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.

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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本周早些时候，联邦执法部门搜查了众议员伊尔汗·奥马尔位于华盛顿特区的住所，这是针对一位面临连任的在任国会女议员采取的非同寻常的法律步骤。

司法部推动对奥马尔的住所进行异常激进的搜查，而这位女议员则表示，她认为政府最终的目的是恐吓她。

政府尚未表示将采取措施剥夺奥马尔的公民身份。但总统本人曾表示，他希望将奥马尔遣返回索马里。

“假‘女议员’伊尔汗·奥马尔，一个不断抱怨、仇恨美国的人，她什么都懂。她应该被关进监狱，或者更糟，被遣返回索马里——世界上最糟糕的国家之一，”唐纳德·特朗普总统今年早些时候在Truth Social上发帖说。“她或许能帮助索马里再次伟大！”

J. Scott Applewhite/美联社

独家报道：法官限制司法部查阅众议员伊尔汗·奥马尔在涉嫌移民欺诈案中的记录

奥马尔尚未被指控犯罪，司法部也没有公布任何针对她的证据。

但法律专家告诉 CNN，联邦政府试图取消公民身份的道路不会一帆风顺。

波士顿学院教授、移民法专家丹尼尔·坎斯特鲁姆表示，公民身份长期以来一直被视为“一种安全港湾”。“获得公民身份很难，但一旦获得，政府剥夺公民身份的门槛就非常非常高。”

消息人士告诉 CNN，此次搜查与一起移民欺诈调查有关，该调查旨在查明奥马尔的父亲在 2000 年奥马尔获得公民身份时是否谎报了她的年龄。

奥马尔坚称自己1982年出生于索马里，并在该国度过了最初的几年，当时索马里正深陷于一场致命的内战之中。她说自己大约12岁时来到美国，并在大约五年后成为美国公民。

联邦调查人员正在调查奥马尔在申请公民身份时是否谎称自己只有 17 岁，以及这是否是近年来重复的虚假陈述，现在可以对此提起诉讼。

取消入籍资格，即剥夺入籍公民的公民身份，是一个艰辛的过程，而且直到最近才相对罕见，通常只适用于入籍过程中犯有非同寻常的谎言或遗漏的情况。

它经常被用来剥夺那些谎称自己在战争期间从事纳粹活动的纳粹分子的美国公民身份——司法部专门为此目的成立了一个名为“特别调查办公室”的部门——它也被用来对付恐怖组织和其他犯罪组织的入籍成员。

自特朗普去年上任以来，司法部表示将优先处理一些取消公民身份的诉讼程序，这些程序是在联邦法院对公民提起的诉讼。

Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP/Getty Images

用于驱逐纳粹分子的法律也可能被用来剥夺更多美国人的公民身份。

根据交易记录访问交换中心的数据，2008 年至 2026 年 6 月 12 日期间，共提交了 166 起取消入籍投诉，年均不到 10 起，与每年数十万新入籍者相比，这只是微不足道的一部分。

但特朗普第二任期政府试图加大打击力度，以遏制和废除几乎所有形式的移民——无论合法还是非法——进入美国。本月初，政府宣布将剥夺40名入籍公民的公民身份，这些案件均在8月21日之后提起。

在前几届政府执政期间，民事取消公民身份案件相对较少。根据交易记录访问中心的数据，2008年至2024年间，共提起116起民事取消公民身份诉讼，平均每年不到7起。

但据 TRAC 的分析，作为遏制移民努力的一部分，特朗普第二届政府大幅增加了这些数字，仅今年截至 9 月 28 日，就提起了 160 多起民事取消公民身份案件。

“这是一个显著的增长，”德克萨斯州的律师丹·吉维登说道。吉维登曾在奥巴马政府时期担任移民和海关执法局的律师，目前正在为大约 10 名客户辩护，防止他们被取消公民身份。

吉维登说：“当时，政府要对某人进行刑事或民事剥夺国籍的程序，这个人必须值得政府如此关注。”

政府可以通过民事诉讼或对入籍欺诈行为进行刑事定罪来取消某人的公民身份。

民事剥夺国籍诉讼没有诉讼时效限制。

然而，刑事犯罪通常有 10 年的追诉期，即在某人成为公民后才能提起诉讼，因此该追诉期可能不适用于奥马尔，因为她在二十多年前就获得了公民身份。

近年来，奥马尔一直受到刑事调查，包括去年特朗普上任之前。

目前联邦政府的调查正在调查奥马尔是否可能犯有移民欺诈罪，以及近年来在填写政府文件（如护照）时是否多次作出虚假陈述，这是否可以被视为任何涉嫌欺诈行为的延续。

检方目前掌握的有关奥马尔移民和政府记录的更多细节已秘密提交法庭，尚未向公众公开。然而，本周十几家媒体机构和右倾的透明度倡导组织“司法观察”（Judicial Watch）要求法院公布更多支持此次搜查的调查记录。

虽然法官将于下周听取司法部关于这些透明度请求的答复，但刑事调查仍在继续。

联邦调查人员获取在奥马尔位于华盛顿特区的家中发现的记录的过程可能会比较缓慢，因为联邦调查人员可能需要花费数周甚至数月的时间才能获得这位女议员的一些文件。

如果奥马尔将来被指控犯有与涉嫌移民欺诈相关的罪行，司法部必须证明移民文件中的任何误导性陈述都是故意作出的。

即使有证据表明奥马尔犯有移民欺诈罪，他是否会被驱逐出境或取消国籍的问题也可能要很久以后才会出现。

奥兰多移民律师彼得·洛布拉克表示，有争议的取消入籍申请通常需要一到三年才能在地区法院得到处理，还不包括上诉。

即使一个人的公民身份被剥夺，也不一定会立即被驱逐出境。

被取消入籍资格的公民将恢复其最近的身份——通常是合法永久居民或绿卡持有者——然后政府必须通过完全不同的程序才能将其驱逐出境。

这也意味着，理论上，被取消公民身份的人可以在日后在不同的政府领导下重新获得公民身份。

CNN的普里西拉·阿尔瓦雷斯和凯瑟琳·肖切特对本报道亦有贡献。