REPORT: Ilhan Omar’s Staff Quietly Changed Her Birth Year After She Entered Congress
Big League Politics
Newly surfaced emails reveal a 2019 request as federal investigators examine her family’s immigration history.
Rep. Ilhan Omar’s congressional staff asked Minnesota officials to change her publicly listed birth year from 1981 to 1982 just months after the Democrat entered Congress, according to newly resurfaced emails.
The request, made in May 2019, is receiving renewed attention following a federal search of Omar’s Washington, D.C., residence as investigators reportedly examine allegations involving her family’s immigration history.
Omar’s biography in the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library had previously listed her birthday as October 4, 1981. That date reportedly appeared during her tenure in the Minnesota House and remained on the state website during the opening months of her congressional career.
But on May 17, 2019, Omar’s congressional staff contacted the library and requested that the year be changed to 1982, according to emails reviewed by the New York Post.
“On May 17, 2019, Library staff were informed by Rep. Omar’s congressional staff that her birth year was incorrect and requested that we change it to 1982,” the library’s director wrote in a May 24 email.
The effort apparently went beyond the Minnesota website.
“Rep. Omar’s congressional staff are working with Wikipedia and with the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress and other sources to correct her birth year on those sites,” the director wrote.
The Minnesota Legislative Reference Library now lists Omar’s birthday as October 4, 1982.
The discrepancy has attracted attention because of Omar’s previous explanation of how she became an American citizen.
Omar and her family arrived in the United States from Somalia in the 1990s. She has said she derived U.S. citizenship through her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, when he became a citizen in 2000.
“I became a citizen actually before I turned 18,” Omar said during a 2018 interview with The Intercept. “My father became a citizen and so I got my citizenship through that process.”
That makes the one-year discrepancy potentially significant.
If Omar was born on October 4, 1981, she would have turned 18 in October 1999. If she was born on October 4, 1982, she would have remained 17 until October 2000.
The precise timing of her father’s naturalization would also be necessary to determine whether the difference had any legal significance.