On Monday, CBS News reported that federal agents searched the Washington, D.C., home of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.), as part of an ongoing investigation that "centers on Omar's immigration paperwork."
In a statement to the Associated Press, the Justice Department said agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)—an office within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that conducts federal criminal investigations into immigration fraud and identity and benefits fraud—"executed a judicially authorized search warrant" as "part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation."
The search warrant reportedly "lists a series of potential immigration crimes under investigation, including false statements and fraud in immigration paperwork, as well as a general conspiracy charge," according to The New York Times. The Times reported that federal officials are also investigating "whether Ms. Omar derived citizenship from a father who may have been ineligible to obtain naturalized status." In a statement, Omar called the investigation an "outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies," stating she did "nothing wrong."
Omar has been in the Justice Department's crosshairs since January, when President Donald Trump announced that the department and Congress were "looking at 'Congresswoman' Illhan Omar, who left Somalia with NOTHING, and is now reportedly worth more than 44 Million Dollars."
Trump was referencing an investigation by the House Ethics Committee, based on a 2025 financial disclosure form showing she and her husband held assets worth between $6 million and $30 million, a notable increase from her previous filings. Omar later filed an amended disclosure form that showed the assets were worth $18,004 to $95,000 after accounting for liabilities. However, in September, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Office of Congressional Conduct—which reviews allegations against House members and their staff—voted 5–1 to recommend that the House Ethics Committee dismiss the allegations. Per the Journal, investigators found no "substantial reason to believe that Rep. Omar reported false or incomplete information in her financial disclosures." Omar's office told the Journal she didn't catch the errors, which stemmed from erroneous valuations of her husband's businesses, because she "isn't involved in her husband's businesses and trusted the accountant involved."
The investigation into Omar appears to be part and parcel of the Trump administration's weaponization of government—which the president vowed to end—adding to a list of cases that includes former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, former FBI Director James Comey, and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Omar's opposition to the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts, particularly in her home state of Minnesota, and her Somali heritage have made her a frequent target of the president and his allies.
Last December, a federal indictment revealed a nearly $9 billion fraud scandal in Minnesota, much of it tied to the state's Somali immigrants. In March, Vice President J.D. Vance—who leads the Trump administration's anti-fraud task force—told right-wing commentator Benny Johnson that Omar "definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America." Vance accused Omar of "being at the center of a lot of the worst fraudsters in the Somali community."
Vance doubled down in May, telling White House reporters the immigration fraud allegations were "something that the Department of Justice is looking at right now." He appeared to pull back from his March claim that he was certain Omar had committed immigration fraud, instead stating that while he didn't want to "prejudge an investigation," it "certainly seems like something fishy is there."
In September, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Johnson that the investigation into Omar was still "ongoing," and that the department knew she had "married her brother to try to bring him into the United States." Omar's office has denied the accusations, which were first levied against her in 2016.
Mullin claims the investigation into Omar is "not political." He could be telling the truth; federal investigators have scrutinized Omar before. In 2024, the Biden administration's Justice Department opened an investigation into Omar's "finances, campaign spending and interactions with a foreign citizen," according to The New York Times. Per the Times, the investigation eventually "stalled for lack of evidence."
But Mullin's words are also hard to take at face value. Despite denying accusations of weaponizing the justice system, the Trump administration has time and again used dubious legal reasoning to investigate the president's political enemies. This includes New York Attorney General Letitia James, who, after successfully suing Trump for financial fraud, was indicted for mortgage fraud by Trump's Justice Department, which used the same petty justification on her.
The president has also continued a campaign to indict Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, announcing last week that the White House would hold in-person hearings to look into claims she committed mortgage fraud. Ousting Cook would ostensibly allow the president to install a Fed governor aligned with his priorities. It's a tactic that failed Trump once before, when his Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for his handling of renovations at the central bank's headquarters. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, dropped the probe in April, and the department ultimately found nothing criminal in Powell's conduct.
An investigation will reveal whether Omar broke the law. Still, if it's anything like the Trump administration's previous efforts, the investigation is likely driven by political animus, not criminal behavior.
The post DHS Searched Ilhan Omar's Home as Part of Immigration Fraud Investigation appeared first on Reason Magazine.
George Anibowei, a U.S. citizen, is a Texas-based immigration attorney with many clients battling the Department of Homeland Security. Border agents have searched his phone at least five times without a warrant as he returned to the United States.
In the first search, agents copied the phone's entire contents, including his confidential communications with clients. The government still has that data, and Anibowei still doesn't know why it was kept or who has seen it. He now leaves his work phone at home when he travels.
On September 29, the Supreme Court asked the federal government to respond to Anibowei's petition, which asks whether the Fourth Amendment lets border agents search the contents of a phone without a warrant. (I'm one of his lawyers.) The government waived its response, expecting the Court would deny the petition without a second look.
But in 2021, the solicitor general told the Court that this very question had produced an "entrenched circuit conflict" of "considerable practical importance." The conflict has only deepened since. Seven federal appeals courts now hold that a warrant is never required to search a phone at the border, while the 4th and 9th Circuits require one in at least some cases. That means one of your constitutional rights currently depends on which airport you fly into.
While circuit courts may disagree, the Supreme Court has already shown the best answer for this question. In Riley v. California (2014), the Court unanimously held that police generally need a warrant to search the phone of someone they arrest. There is an exception for searches incident to arrest, which allows the police to arrest someone without a warrant; that exists to protect officers and preserve evidence. Data can't hurt an officer, and a phone can be secured while police get a warrant. An extension of an old exception to digital data, the court said, "has to rest on its own bottom." Treating a phone like any other container in an arrestee's pockets was like saying "a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon."
The border-search exception fails the same test. Those searches exist to collect duties, keep out people who may not enter, and stop contraband. But duties attach to physical goods, not data. And as the legal scholar Orin Kerr has put it, agents "will not find a person smuggled inside a computer hard drive." As for digital contraband, anyone who wants illicit files can carry a clean phone and download them after clearing customs. Suspicionless phone searches burden millions of innocent travelers while barely inconveniencing smugglers.
The appeals courts that disagree mostly cite one another. But the Supreme Court rejected a lopsided lower-court consensus in Riley, and again in Carpenter v. United States (2018). Counting courts is not a constitutional argument.
Defenders of these searches lean on history. In United States v. Ramsey (1977), the Court noted that the first Congress authorized warrantless customs searches in 1789, less than two months before it proposed the Fourth Amendment. True enough. But that statute let officers search ships for hidden dutiable goods. To search a house, store, or other building for the same goods, officers needed a warrant. And nothing in the statute let officers read a traveler's papers.
That distinction was no accident. Customs abuses had helped spark the Revolution. Writs of assistance gave British customs officers blanket authority to search wherever they pleased, which James Otis said placed "the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer." And the founding generation guarded letters especially closely. Benjamin Franklin, as the first postmaster general, made postal workers swear they would not open mail without an express written warrant.
Even Ramsey, the government's favorite border search precedent, respected that distinction. It upheld opening international mail to look for contraband, but the regulations before the court flatly prohibited reading correspondence without a warrant, a point the justices stressed repeatedly. The Court has never held that border agents may read a traveler's papers without a warrant. A phone holds years of correspondence. It deserves at least the same protection the Founders gave a sealed envelope.
Last month, however, the 2nd Circuit joined those courts that have disregarded this tradition. In United States v. Alisigwe, Judge Steven Menashi wrote that agents need no suspicion whatsoever to search a traveler's property at the border, phones included. A border search becomes non-routine, he reasoned, only when it intrudes on the person, as a strip search does. A phone is property, so searching it is routine.
Judge Eunice Lee concurred, agreeing that no warrant was required. But she warned that the majority's rule permits suspicionless searches for any reason, "including political or discriminatory ones."
The Alisigwe majority's premise miscasts the Fourth Amendment. The amendment's text secures "persons, houses, papers, and effects" in a single, unranked list. The abuses that produced the amendment were searches of property, including private papers. Agents may properly physically examine a phone to ensure it's not really a container for smuggling contraband. But reading or viewing its digital contents without a warrant trespasses on a person's papers and effects. The framers protected property because they recognized that human beings are not ghosts: We live in the physical world by exercising our property rights, and so searching our property can reveal much about our lives.
Alisigwe is the latest word from a Court of Appeals, but it contains complications for the constitutional issue. The trial court found that agents had reasonable suspicion, so the no-suspicion holding arguably wasn't needed to decide the case. That suspicion involved a forged passport, which goes to identity and admissibility, the core of border authority. Finally, Alisigwe was a permanent resident, not a citizen, so the government's interest in deciding who may enter was heightened.
Anibowei is simple on each of these counts, which is why one can be hopeful the Supreme Court will take it and address the Fourth Amendment question now. Anibowei is a naturalized citizen, no one suspects him of anything, and he challenges the government's search policies directly rather than seeking suppression of evidence in a criminal case. As the 5th Circuit itself acknowledged, his case "turns squarely and solely" on the warrant question.
The stakes keep growing. In FY 2025, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) searched 55,318 electronic devices, nearly 11 times as many as in 2012—and nearly a quarter of those searches targeted U.S. citizens. According to the directives Anibowei challenges, agents may keep what they find and share it with federal, state, local, and foreign agencies. Investigators have learned to wait for a target to travel and ask CBP to search his phone on the way back in, rather than go to the trouble of demonstrating probable cause to a judge. No wonder universities, bar associations, and press freedom groups now advise travelers to leave their devices at home.
The Founders rebelled against customs officers who could search wherever they pleased and read whatever they found. A rule letting border agents scroll through a citizen's correspondence, photos, and client files without a warrant, or any suspicion at all, revives that power. The Supreme Court should take Anibowei's case. Our papers don't lose Fourth Amendment protections at the border just because they're digital.
The post Are Warrantless Phone Searches at the Border Constitutional? The Supreme Court May Soon Decide. appeared first on Reason Magazine.
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