“Ilhan Omar, whatever her name is, with the little – with the little turban, I love her. She comes in, just being a bitch.”
“Ilhan Omar is trash. She’s trash. Her friends are trash. (…) These are not people who work. These are not people who say: let’s do it. Come on, let’s make this place great. These are people who just complain.”
“She comes from a country with no laws, no police, no army, where all they do is shoot each other. And she comes to our country and she says, ‘I have a constitutional right.’ She’s talking to us about the Constitution, and she comes from one of the worst countries on the planet.”
These are just three of Donald Trump’s many attacks on Democratic U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Few people have been targeted with such ferocity by the US president. But why did Trump point the finger at her with such hostility?
Who is Ilhan Omar?
Ilhan Abdullahi Omar, 44, was born in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. She fled the country’s civil war when she was still a child and spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya. She finally came to the United States with her family in 1995, at the age of 12, and became a US citizen in 2000. She joined the Democratic Party and made a career as a politician on the left wing of the party. Since January 2019, she has served as a Minnesota state representative and one of the first two Muslim women to enter the U.S. Congress.
Ilhan Omar is a practicing Muslim who wears a hijab, and Congress changed a 180-year-old rule forbidding headscarves in the House chamber for her. Politically and socially, Omar champions progressive values and often links his faith to his commitment to social justice, human rights and the protection of minorities.
Omar campaigns on issues such as universal health insurance, raising the minimum wage, climate protection and canceling student debt. She is also one of Donald Trump’s most prominent and vocal critics, repeatedly accusing him of racism and systematically fomenting hatred against minorities, immigrants and Muslims. She has frequently condemned raids carried out by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, which she calls a “militarized fear campaign”. She also accused the president of corruption in office.
Criticism of Israel and accusations of anti-Semitism
Young, outspoken, feminine, Muslim and a left-wing Democrat – politically, Ilhan Omar is almost the opposite of the 80-year-old Republican Trump. But she is also a controversial figure within her own party.
Omar is one of the fiercest critics of Israel in US politics and has repeatedly questioned Washington’s support for the country. She has been accused of anti-Semitism and supporting the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement, which encourages people to boycott Israeli companies. Omar defended BDS as a legitimate form of nonviolent protest and free speech. In 2019, she even presented a resolution to the US Congress aimed at strengthening Americans’ right to boycott, with a view to countering laws that restrict the actions of the BDS movement.
In early 2023, Republicans removed her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee over a number of controversial tweets, including a comment she made in 2021 that appeared to equate the actions of the United States and Israel with those of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Palestinian group Hamas. The latter is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and many other countries around the world.
Accusations of embezzlement and immigration fraud
His detractors have also tried to link Omar to a corruption scandal in his home state of Minnesota. During the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately $250 million (€220 million) was diverted from a government-funded food program for children. Omar previously called for the program’s rules to be relaxed.
Many of those convicted were from the state’s Somali community, which political opponents, including Trump, took advantage of to claim Omar was involved. No law enforcement authority has ever accused her of wrongdoing.
The most recent accusation against Omar concerns his immigration to the United States. For years, her opponents claimed she made false statements during the proceedings, even alleging she entered into a fraudulent marriage with her biological brother to help him obtain a U.S. visa. On October 12, federal authorities ordered a search of Omar’s home, investigating allegations that Omar’s father lied about his age on his immigration application.
Controversial house search
Omar has repeatedly denied the accusations, describing them as part of a “campaign of political intimidation” and an “attempt to target political enemies.” Several prominent Democratic politicians have come to his defense, accusing the Trump administration of using the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security as a weapon against his political opponents.
Former immigration officials told the Reuters news agency that it was extremely unusual for a house search to be carried out as part of such an investigation, as the government should already have all the relevant immigration documents.
Many consider a search of a sitting congressman’s home for a 26-year-old formality excessive, and have been particularly critical of the timing of the search, just three weeks before the congressional elections in which Omar is running for re-election.
The long-standing, unwritten “60-day rule” stipulates that authorities take no public action against political candidates in the two months before an election, so as not to influence the outcome. Critics consider the fact that this practice was ignored in Omar’s case amounts to electoral interference.
Other Muslim politicians also targeted
As the midterm elections approach, Trump is grappling with plummeting approval ratings, and Omar is not the only Muslim politician the president is attacking. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for the Michigan Senate, is another.
At a rally last Saturday in Tennessee, Trump said of El-Sayed: “I call him Mohammed. Someone said, ‘His name isn’t Mohammed, it’s Abdul.’ I said, “For me, it’s Mohammed.” I am the president. I can call it whatever I want. For me, it’s Mohammed and he’s a radical jihadist. »
There is no intelligence to suggest that El-Sayed has ties to extremists. The 41-year-old epidemiologist was born and raised in Michigan. He attended university there, then won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, where he obtained a doctorate in public health. For many years he served as health director for the city of Detroit. Like Omar, he also belongs to the progressive left wing of the American Democratic Party.
During the election campaign, El-Sayed repeatedly stressed that he was not responsible for rising food prices, high rents and other political grievances. He placed the blame squarely on what he describes as the Washington administration’s policy failure.
This article has been translated from German.
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