Obama speaks out about Trump using the government against Ilhan Omar!
Excerpt from Common Dreams:
Former President Barack Obama on Sunday spoke out against the Trump administration’s plot to strip Rep. Ilhan Omar of her US citizenship and remove her from the country.
In a lengthy social media post, Obama said the administration’s attack on Omar (D-Minn.) violates “a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say.”
Obama’s post came nearly one week after agents at the US Department of Homeland Security conducted a raid of Omar’s home. Days after the raid, the Wall Street Journal reported that the raid on Omar was part of an effort to build “a case to strip her of her US citizenship and ultimately deport her.”
“To understand why this is so appalling, it’s important to know the facts,” Obama wrote. “Congresswoman Omar came to this country with her father when she was 12 years old. Five years later, her father became a naturalized citizen. If Ilhan had been 18 at the time, she would have had to apply for citizenship separately. But because she was 17, she became a naturalized citizen automatically.”
Obama noted that President Donald Trump has repeatedly targeted Omar “as someone who he believes does not belong in this country,” and accused the president of seizing upon an “unsubstantiated theory that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized” to carry out his deportation plot.
“The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president,” Obama wrote. “And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies—from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve.”
Obama concluded by warning that letting Trump’s actions go unchallenged would set a terrible precedent that even the president’s allies could one day live to regret.
“If this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with [Omar],” Obama wrote, “or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.”
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What the DHS raid on Ilhan Omar’s home is really about
There are signs of desperation in the Trump administration’s new attack on the congresswoman.
Trump sees Omar as a convenient target for his white nationalist agenda.
Excerpt from MS.NOW:
The 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 father when she was a child 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?
As 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.
