Former US President Barack Obama criticized efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to strip Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar of her US citizenship and deport her, warning that targeting elected officials for criticizing the president violates fundamental principles of American democracy.
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Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, meanwhile said that revoking Omar’s citizenship was “certainly possible” if investigations establish that there were irregularities in the process through which she obtained citizenship.
In a lengthy social media post on Sunday, Obama said the government should not selectively target individuals because of their political beliefs or statements, adding that “the federal government is using its full power against an elected official who follows the law simply because she dared to criticize the president.”
Obama’s comments came about a week after US Department of Homeland Security agents raided Omar’s home in Minnesota as part of an investigation into possible legal violations involving her or members of her family when she obtained US citizenship.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the investigation was aimed at building a legal case to revoke the congresswoman’s citizenship as a prelude to deporting her.
In an interview with Fox News on Saturday, Homan said there are legal procedures for revoking the citizenship of naturalized citizens if they are found to have lied during the naturalization process.
“We’ve done it before. It’s a long and difficult process, but it has happened before,” Homan said, adding that such action could be taken “certainly if the evidence points that way.”
These were the first public remarks by a senior Trump administration official to explicitly link the investigation into Omar with the possibility of revoking her citizenship and deporting her since her home was raided on October 12.
Homan did not disclose further details about the investigation, but suggested that authorities were also examining other allegations, saying that any disclosure of information concerning them was a matter for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Omar, who was born in Somalia and became a naturalized US citizen, was a child when her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, completed immigration paperwork that is now under scrutiny. The investigation comes weeks before the November midterm elections, in which Omar is seeking reelection.
Obama said Omar came to the United States with her father when she was 12 and automatically became a US citizen when her father was naturalized, as she was 17 at the time and was not required to file a separate application.
Obama accused Trump of relying on an unsubstantiated theory claiming that Omar was 18 when her father became a citizen in an effort to justify attempts to revoke her citizenship and deport her.
The former president also said the Justice Department under Trump had repeatedly targeted people whom the president considers political opponents, warning that tolerating such practices could establish a dangerous precedent that could eventually affect people from both the Republican and Democratic parties.
“If this becomes the new normal, there is no reason to believe it will stop with Omar, or that future presidents from either party will not do the same thing,” Obama said.
Trump rose to political prominence over the past decade by promoting a racist conspiracy theory falsely claiming that Obama was born in Kenya and therefore was ineligible to serve as US president.
