Rep. Ilhan Omar has filed a batch of amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act that would repeal the Alien Enemies Act, block the use of military force against congressionally designated terrorist organizations, and dismantle the U.S. military stockpile that allows Israel to rearm during active conflict. Her office declined to explain why.
The Minnesota Democrat's amendments, reported by The Daily Signal, land in the middle of a defense-spending cycle already saturated with progressive protest amendments, and at a moment when the Trump administration is actively using both the Alien Enemies Act and the Foreign Terrorist Organization list as operational tools to deport cartel-linked illegal immigrants and strike terror networks abroad.
Omar submitted the amendments to the NDAA, the annual defense policy bill that funds and shapes the entire U.S. military. Three of her proposals stand out for their scope and timing: Amendment #1273, a "sense of Congress" resolution declaring that designating a group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization does not authorize military force against it; Amendment #1152, which would repeal the Alien Enemies Act outright; and Amendment #1177, which would end the War Reserve Stockpile Authority for Israel.
The Alien Enemies Act dates to 1798. Congress passed it to give the president authority to apprehend, restrain, and deport noncitizens from hostile nations without standard immigration hearings, a wartime tool designed to prevent foreign espionage and sabotage. President Trump invoked it during his second term to expedite the deportation of Venezuelan nationals he identified as members of the Tren de Aragua drug cartel. Hundreds of deportations followed. The ACLU filed suit to stop the practice.
Omar's Amendment #1152 would repeal the statute entirely. Matt O'Brien, the deputy executive director of the Federation of American Immigration Reform and a former immigration judge, told The Daily Signal that Omar's effort goes beyond the cartel question.
"It would also apply any time the president issues a formal proclamation declaring that a nation designated a state sponsor of terrorism, or its agents, are threatening or perpetrating hostilities against, or incursions into, the U.S. as specified in the AEA."
In other words, repealing the act would strip the executive branch of a tool that applies not just to cartel members but to agents of any state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, for example, during an active threat. Omar was one of 53 House Democrats who voted against a measure to designate Iran as a state sponsor of terror this spring, a vote that tracks with her broader pattern of resistance to enforcement tools aimed at hostile foreign actors.
O'Brien noted that the practical effect of repeal would be limited in one sense, since most individuals removed under the Alien Enemies Act also qualified for removal on other grounds. But the act's value lies in speed, not in creating new categories of deportable aliens.
"Moreover, the AEA does not create any unique bases for removal. Rather, in certain limited circumstances, it enables expedited removal of aliens who are hostile to the national security interests of the United States."
Strip away the expedited process, and what remains is the standard immigration bureaucracy, the same system that allowed backlogs, delays, and sanctuary-city gamesmanship to undermine enforcement for years. That is the system Omar's amendment would force the executive branch to rely on exclusively, even during a declared emergency involving hostile foreign nationals.
Amendment #1273 is framed as a "sense of Congress" resolution, meaning it would not carry the force of law. But its message is pointed. Omar's own press release describes it as expressing "the sense of Congress that designation of a foreign terrorist organization does not constitute an authorization for the use of military force."
There are more than 70 congressionally designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The list includes Hamas, ISIS, al-Qaeda, and, since President Trump's 2025 executive order, drug cartels like the Sinaloa Cartel. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas introduced H.R. 885 in February to codify the cartel designation legislatively, though the bill has not reached the floor.
The timing matters. The Trump administration has directed the Pentagon to carry out military operations against terrorist organizations abroad, including strikes on drug smuggling boats from Latin America that killed at least 27 suspected smugglers, bombing targets in Iraq, Nigeria, and Somalia, and retaliatory strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen after they targeted U.S. service members in Syria. Omar's amendment would put Congress on record saying that none of those designations, by themselves, justify the use of force.
O'Brien framed Omar's broader effort bluntly. She, he said, "is clearly seeking to curtail any legal authorities that permit the president to control the borders and prohibit foreign national security and public safety threats from entering the United States."
Omar's office did not respond to The Daily Signal's request for comment. That pattern of declining to answer pointed questions has become a recurring feature of Omar's public conduct.
Amendment #1177 targets the War Reserve Stockpile Authority for Israel, known as WRSA-I. Established in the 1990s, the program pre-positions U.S.-owned military equipment in Israel, allowing the Israeli Defense Forces to draw directly from American depots during emergencies. The Washington Institute has described WRSA-I as an "insurance policy" for rapid resupply. A similar arrangement exists with South Korea.
Israel accessed the stockpile after Hamas militants invaded on October 7, 2023, an attack in which over 1,000 Israeli citizens were killed or taken hostage. Since then, the IDF has reported killing between 8,500 and 14,000 Hamas militants. U.S. defense spending on Israel since October 7 amounts to roughly 0.38 percent of the annual defense budget, per the Council on Foreign Relations.
Omar's amendment would end WRSA-I entirely. The proposal arrives as Israel continues operations against Hamas and as the broader Iranian-backed network, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, remains active across the region. Hamas's own 1988 founding charter declared: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it."
Omar's hostility toward the U.S.-Israel alliance is not new. But proposing to dismantle a pre-positioned weapons stockpile while Israel fights a congressionally designated terrorist organization that openly calls for its destruction is a move that clarifies priorities.
Omar's amendments are part of a much larger wave. Fox News reported that House Democrats filed roughly 450 amendments to the fiscal 2026 NDAA, with over 1,000 total amendments introduced. Many target Trump administration policies on DEI, immigration enforcement, and support for Israel. Most are unlikely to pass. They function primarily as symbolic markers, ways for progressive members to register opposition without bearing the political cost of actually blocking defense funding.
The defense bill itself is advancing. The New York Post reported that the House passed an $832 billion defense appropriations bill on a 221-209 vote, including a 3.8 percent pay raise for active-duty, National Guard, and reserve service members, along with at least $148 billion for defense research and development.
That vote split largely along party lines, with only five Democrats crossing over to support the bill. The contrast is worth noting: while Republicans funded a 3.8 percent raise for troops and invested in military readiness, Omar filed amendments to repeal the president's wartime deportation authority, undermine the legal basis for striking terrorist organizations, and pull the weapons stockpile out from under an ally under fire.
Omar's record on national security and foreign policy votes has drawn scrutiny before. She stood alone among Democrats in voting against a Ukraine aid and Russia sanctions bill, a position that put her at odds with virtually every member of her own caucus.
Meanwhile, the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the organizations Omar's amendment would shield from any implication of military authorization, was responsible for nearly 600 homicides in June 2025 alone and continues to traffic drugs and weapons into the United States. The 2015 Paris attacks by ISIS, another designated FTO, killed 129 people and wounded 352.
These are the organizations whose designation Omar wants Congress to declare insufficient grounds for the use of force.
Omar's financial disclosures have also raised persistent questions that she has declined to address. Her reported net worth plunged from as much as $30 million to potentially negative territory, a swing that has drawn scrutiny and no satisfactory public explanation. She has similarly refused to answer questions about ties to Minnesota's $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud.
None of that disqualifies her from filing amendments. But it establishes a pattern: a member of Congress who consistently declines to explain her positions, her votes, or her finances, while advancing proposals that would weaken the tools the executive branch uses to remove hostile foreign nationals, strike terrorist networks, and support an embattled ally.
When a lawmaker works this hard to disarm the government's ability to fight designated terrorist organizations, the least she owes her constituents is an explanation. Omar hasn't offered one.
