Department of Homeland Security raid on Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington home Monday morning is a shameful and shocking attempt to use the pretext of immigration enforcement to advance an extreme right-wing nationalist political agenda.

The notion that raiding the home of a congresswoman was necessary or may have been motivated by a good faith attempt to uphold the law is laughable. Omar, a Democrat representing Minnesota, has been a U.S. citizen since 2000 —when she was 17 years old.

According to Fox News citing two sources close to the investigation, “the search stems from a criminal fraud investigation into the Somali-born congresswoman’s immigration paperwork, which was filled out by her late father when she was a child.”That this investigation is reportedly being spurred by a possible problem with paperwork filled out by her when she was a underscores how desperate the Trump administration was to scrounge something up.

Of course, that’s hardly the only tell that this was politically motivated. Why is this happening in October, just a few weeks before Omar is up for re-election?

The Associated Press notes“The Justice Department has historically sought to avoid public investigative actions involving a candidate within 60 days of a primary or general election.”That norm is observed precisely to avoid abusing the law enforcement power of the federal government for political purposes — and to avoid generating suspicions that legitimate investigations are political. That the Trump administration is choosing to shun that norm gives away the game. Furthermore the fact that since last year Trump has been saying he wants Omar out of the country and that he thinks she shouldn’t be allowed to serve in Congress is a clear signal about potential motives. Trump sees Omar as a convenient target for his white nationalist agenda.

The DHS raid fits a broader pattern: Donald Trump looks for obscure alleged administrative wrongdoings by political foes and then uses federal law enforcement powers as a weapon. The Trump administration has, for example, used allegations of mortgage fraud to pressure and intimidate Democrats, even though he himself and members of his Cabinet have reportedly committed the same kinds of acts he has deemed “deceitful and potentially criminal.”

The reality, it should be easy to deduce, is that Trump sees Omar as a convenient target for his white nationalist agenda While he has effectively singled out white South Africans for entry into the country as refugees, he describes Somali immigrants as “garbage”“low-IQ people”who ought to be kicked out. Trump sees trying to oust Omar, a Somali American, from Congress (or the country) as a way to deliver red meat to the most extreme elements of his base.

In his comments on the raid Monday, Trump said“I think she’s a terrible person, she’s just a complainer. She comes from a country that is a non-country. Then she comes over here and complains about our constitution.”The implication is that Trump seems to think Omar’s specific national origin should bar her from having the full rights of a citizen — and he appears offended that she exercises them so confidently.

Trump has long treated Omar as a political punching bag. Back in 2019, he tweeted that Omar, along with a group of other progressive lawmakers of color — who aren’t immigrants — should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”In December, at a Pennsylvania event that Omar must get “the hell out” of the country and said she shouldn’t be allowed to be a congresswoman, prompting his supporters to chant “send her back.”

In January, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Omar and her absolutely terrible friends from Somalia should all be in jail right now or, far worse, send them back to Somalia.”Now it appears his administration is using an investigation to attempt to make good on his bigoted threats.

Regardless of what happens with the investigation, the raid plainly serves as a way to attempt to discredit Omar’s political standing ahead of her election. It’s also probably not a coincidence that he’s targeting a lawmaker from a blue state with whom he has developed an extraordinarily adversarial and spiteful relationship. He’s used a disingenuous pretext of fraud deprive Minnesota of social services He attempted to use federal immigration agents effectively acting as a secret police force to occupy the state — until activists fought back and drove them out.

And last week, he seemed to imply that Minnesotans should consider vigilante violence against the state’s Somali community, saying “the people of Minnesota must fight back” against the state “being taken over by Somali Immigrants.”While it’s not clear what the potential outcomes of the investigation are, it fits into the Trump administration’s stated agenda to denaturalize citizens more aggressively than any other in history. It’s yet another way for Trump to peddle the fiction that immigrants are the source of our national problems.

Omar is also a prominent target because she’s a vociferous progressive who is aligned with democratic socialists in Congress on issues such as supporting Medicare for All and cutting off aid to Israel.

As I’ve written before Trump and his allies, like many reactionaries before them, appear particularly keen on commingling their targeting of people of color with their attacks on left-wing politics.

The goal is to render both progressive politics and politicians of color as alien and unwanted in America. Omar is the latest scapegoat. She won’t be the last.

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