President Donald Trump on Saturday went after Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), again invoking her Somali heritage and urging her to “go back,” a line he has used several times since taking office.
“She should go back!” Trump said on Truth Social, alongside a video clip of Omar speaking to a crowd in which she said her allegiance would always be with her native country.
It was not immediately clear when the video was recorded, but the footage has circulated for weeks on conservative-leaning social media accounts.
Omar was born in Somalia and fled the country’s civil war at age 8, later spending four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before coming to the United States in 1995.
She became an American citizen in 2000 and has served in Congress since 2019.
Trump’s latest post quickly gained traction online, with supporters including conservative activist Laura Loomer amplifying it across social media platforms.
The former president’s comments come amid renewed scrutiny of Omar’s record in Congress and her frequent clashes with House Republicans.
It is not the first time in recent months that Trump has suggested Omar should be removed from the country.
“You know, I met the head of Somalia, did you know that?” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in September.
“And I suggested that maybe he’d like to take her back,” Trump said. “He said, ‘I don’t want her.’”
The exchange echoed comments Trump made during his first term, when he accused Omar and other members of the so-called “Squad” of “telling us how to run our country.”
Omar has often been one of Trump’s most frequent critics, accusing him of using race and religion as political weapons.
Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest remarks.
Speaking Friday on “The Dean Obeidallah Show,” Omar
dismissed talk of deportation or citizenship challenges.
“I have no worry,” she said. “I don’t know how they’d take away my citizenship and, like, deport me.”
“But I don’t even know why that’s such a scary threat,” Omar added. “I’m not the 8-year-old who escaped war anymore. I’m grown, my kids are grown. I could go live wherever I want if I wanted to.”
“It’s a weird thing to wake up every single day to bring that into every single conversation — ‘we’re gonna deport Ilhan,’” she said.
Omar faced new calls for her removal from office and even the revocation of her U.S. citizenship last month after she reposted a video online that accused Kirk of denying “the genocide happening in Palestine” and spreading “racist dog whistles.”
In a separate interview with broadcaster Mehdi Hasan, she described herself as “mortified” by Kirk’s murder and expressed empathy for his wife and two children, but also criticized his positions on race relations and gun rights, particularly in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.
Her remarks drew immediate backlash from Republicans, who accused Omar of downplaying the tragedy and fueling political division. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), whose office is near Omar’s on Capitol Hill, introduced a resolution to censure her and remove her from House committees. That motion failed by a single vote, 214–213, after four Republicans joined Democrats to table it.
Mace has since gone further, suggesting Omar’s U.S. citizenship should be revoked. “We would love to see you deported back to Somalia next,” Mace wrote in a social media post. Others online echoed similar calls, citing longstanding allegations that Omar committed immigration and marriage fraud.
Adding to the controversy is renewed attention to Omar’s late father, Nur Omar Mohamed. Somali-language obituaries described him as a senior officer in the regime of dictator Siad Barre, which ruled Somalia for decades and carried out atrocities against rival ethnic groups.
Fact-checking organizations like Snopes and Politifact disputed those claims in 2019, describing Nur as a “teacher trainer.”
After Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral election—making him the city’s first Muslim and first South Asian mayor-elect—Republican leaders in Washington, D.C., signaled plans to try to block him from taking office.
President Donald Trump has accused the 34-year-old Ugandan-born politician of being a communist, after previously warning that he would withhold federal funding from New York City if Mamdani won. Mamdani secured his win last week with a decisive margin, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo by nearly 10 percentage points, though Mamdani barely won a majority of votes overall.
But some Republican lawmakers have vowed to block him from taking office. Some Republican lawmakers have demanded investigations into Mamdani’s naturalisation process, calling for him to be stripped of his US citizenship and deported. They have accused him of involvement in communist and “terrorist” activities and figures linked to terrorism.
“If Mamdani lied on his naturalisation documents, he doesn’t get to be a citizen, and he certainly doesn’t get to run for mayor of New York City. A great American city is on the precipice of being run by a communist who has publicly embraced a terroristic ideology,” Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) said in an October 29 news release, after asking US Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the mayor-elect, the Economic Times reported.
“The American naturalization system REQUIRES any alignments with communism or terrorist activities to be disclosed. I’m doubtful he disclosed them. If the information is confirmed, put him on the first flight back to Uganda,” Ogles added.
Meanwhile, a campaign finance watchdog has filed two criminal referrals against Mamdani, accusing the leftist socialist of taking illicit donations from overseas contributors.
The Coolidge Reagan Foundation sent the recommendations to the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office last week. They say that Mamdani may have broken the Federal Election Campaign Act and the New York Election Code.
The recommendations were made after the New York Post reported earlier this month that Mamdani’s campaign got about $13,000 in donations from at least 170 people who live outside the US, including one from his mother-in-law in Dubai.
“These are not isolated incidents or clerical errors,” Dan Backer, a national campaign finance expert and president of the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, said in a statement.
“This was a sustained pattern of foreign money flowing into a New York City mayoral race which is a clear violation of both federal law and New York City campaign finance rules,” Backer added. “Mamdani’s campaign was on notice for months that it was accepting illegal foreign contributions, and yet it did nothing meaningful to stop it.”
The Coolidge Reagan Foundation has previously filed complaints against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and the Democratic National Committee.
The watchdog told Bragg and the DOJ to look into and arrest Mamdani for the campaign cash that may have come from Australia, Turkey, France, Canada, Germany, and other countries.
The group said that Mamdani’s campaign had shown a “systematic failure to comply” with the rules about campaign money.
The Federal Election Campaign Act says that it is against the law to “accept or receive” donations from people who are not US citizens in any federal, state, or local election.
People who knowingly accept donations from other countries could face big fines and jail time.
“The law is crystal clear that foreign nationals may not participate in American elections, and that includes making contributions,” Backer continued. “Yet Mamdani’s campaign repeatedly accepted donations from individuals abroad, some even tied to regions and individuals openly sympathetic to hostile actors.”
“Whether through negligence or intent, this conduct undermines the integrity of the democratic process.”
Mamdani’s campaign for mayor of New York City sent back about $9,000 in donations from people outside the U.S., the Post reported.