Ilhan Omar hired Biden’s autopen attorney and a Trump impeachment lawyer to fight a federal immigration probe after agents raided her D.C. home.
Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar has brought on Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz of the boutique D.C. firm Hecker Fink as she faces a federal probe into her immigration history and revisions to her financial disclosure forms. Jeffress became former President Biden’s personal attorney in 2025 and represented him in investigations tied to the use of an autopen to sign presidential pardons and legislation. Matz previously represented House Democrats in both Trump impeachments and served on the House Jan. 6 committee legal team.
The New York Post reported that federal agents searched Omar’s Washington, D.C., home this month. Court documents connected to that search reference a prior alias, Nur Said Elmi. Jeffress and Matz later sent a seven-page letter to the Department of Justice demanding the return of her passport, electronics, and other seized property.
President Trump called Thursday night for Omar to resign “IMMEDIATELY,” saying she was sworn in under a name different from her own. The pressure fits a broader pattern in which Trump has pressed Omar to step down over identity and fraud questions tied to the same case.
Fox News reported that Homeland Security Investigations agents searched Omar’s D.C. home around 6 a.m. on a Monday under a judicially authorized warrant secured by the Department of Justice. Officials described the action as part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation linked to immigration paperwork filled out by her late father when she was a child.
A DOJ spokesperson stated the basis for the search in plain terms.
"Today in the Washington, D.C., area, Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice. This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal investigation."
Omar denounced the search as political targeting and said she would not be silenced.
"Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.... I will not be silenced."
Just The News reported the raid took place Oct. 12, lasted four to five hours, and involved as many as 25 agents. Agents seized 17 items, including about 10 notebooks and old phones. Omar, a mother to one teenager and two adult children, said she will move because the now-public address and ongoing death threats make the house unsafe when her kids visit.
"Obviously, I can’t continue to live there. Our address has been public. And with the death threats that I deal with, it’s no longer going to be feasible to be in that house and have my kids visiting off and on, having people track them."
Investigators did not stop at the warrant service. Breitbart reported that federal investigators collected garbage from Omar’s home in a bid for DNA evidence, that her cellphone was seized, and that family members received subpoenas. Multiple sources familiar with the probe told NewsNation that potential DNA evidence is critical and that the case is broader than longstanding public accusations about immigration history and marital status. One person questioned by investigators, identified as Johnson, said agents asked about Omar’s immigration and naturalization and about her father, leading him to infer a possible civil path that could lead to denaturalization.
Those DNA-collection details line up with earlier coverage of how agents sought genetic material from Omar’s trash during the same immigration fraud inquiry.
Jeffress is not a neutral hired gun. Before becoming Biden’s personal attorney in 2025, succeeding longtime confidant Bob Bauer, she worked at Arnold & Porter, did outside counsel work for the House Jan. 6 committee, and previously represented former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. Page was one of the FBI employees whose anti-Trump texts during the 2016 campaign fueled accusations of political bias and led to her resignation.
Matz’s record runs the same direction. He represented House Democrats during both Trump impeachments, served on the Jan. 6 committee legal team, and later represented Brown University, New York University, and Columbia University in legal fights over Trump administration executive orders that targeted affirmative action and DEI policies in favor of merit-based rules.
Together, the pair sent their seven-page letter to DOJ last Friday seeking the return of the passport, electronics, and other property taken in the search. A Post review of Omar’s campaign filings found no payments to Hecker Fink or to the lawyers directly as of the Oct. 15 filing deadline.
Questions about what name Omar has used legally have also surfaced in federal reporting, including accounts that her legal name may not match the one voters know.
Omar said she was not allowed to phone her attorney for an hour after agents searched the home. This week she appeared in a video filmed in the back of a moving car asking supporters for legal-defense cash. In the Tuesday night appeal she put the ask in small-dollar terms.
"It is going to be a very expensive and challenging time and so we appreciate whether you’re able to send $5, $10, $20."
She has also claimed in an MS NOW interview that she lives “paycheck to paycheck,” even as she draws a $174,000 congressional salary. The U.S. Attorney in D.C. is now pursuing the probe into her immigration history and the eyebrow-raising revisions to her financial disclosure forms.
Court papers tied to the home search reference the alias Nur Said Elmi, a detail that overlaps long-running claims about Omar’s ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, and old allegations first aired on a Somali blog that he is her brother. Omar has faced renewed scrutiny on those family questions after the raid, including coverage of how she hedged on brother-marriage rumors once federal agents had been through her door.
Trump has kept the pressure high and has pointed to possible jail or removal outcomes in the citizenship case, language reflected in prior remarks that Omar could face prison or deportation if the fraud claims hold.
No charges, indictment, or deportation order appear in the available reporting. What does appear is a judicially authorized search, seized devices and papers, a DNA collection effort from household trash, family subpoenas, a seven-page defense letter to DOJ, unpaid campaign filings through mid-October, and a sitting member of Congress raising small-dollar donations from the back seat of a car.
Jeffress and Matz built their recent careers defending Biden, House Democrats, the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena push, and universities fighting merit-focused Trump orders. Omar is now relying on that same bench while federal investigators examine the immigration paperwork that brought her into the country and the disclosure forms she later revised.
Taxpayers fund the $174,000 salary. Voters were told a clean immigration story. Federal agents showed up at dawn with a warrant, took the phones and notebooks, and started pulling DNA from the trash. The lawyers she hired know how to fight Trump-era cases. They now have to answer a simpler question: what do the documents and the DNA actually say?
