Newly surfaced correspondence shows that staff for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) worked to change her listed birth year in public records months after she entered Congress, shifting the year from 1981 to 1982.
The change was made in May 2019, after Omar’s congressional office contacted Minnesota’s Legislative Reference Library and asked that her birth year be corrected.
For years before that request, the library had listed Omar’s date of birth as Oct. 4, 1981.
The same year also appeared in other public references, including Wikipedia, the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress and media coverage.
Those records remained in place throughout Omar’s time in the Minnesota House and during the first months of her congressional career.
According to an email dated May 24, 2019, library officials said Omar’s staff contacted them on May 17 and asked that her birth year be changed to 1982.
The library director wrote that Omar’s congressional staff was also reaching out to other public reference sites to make the same correction.
The director also explained that the original 1981 date had been entered because it was widely available elsewhere and had not been backed by documentation provided directly by Omar.
The timing of the change is drawing attention because it came shortly after a political opponent circulated a video questioning Omar’s stated age.
Omar has long said she became a U.S. citizen before turning 18 through her father’s naturalization.
“I became a citizen actually before I turned 18,” Omar said in 2018.
“My father became a citizen and so I got my citizenship through that process.”
The difference between 1981 and 1982 is important because of the age requirement tied to derivative citizenship.
If Omar was born in 1982, she would have been 17 in 2000, consistent with her account.
If she was born in 1981, critics argue she would have been 18 or 19 that year and therefore outside the age window for automatically receiving citizenship through a naturalized parent under the rules in effect at the time.
Those claims remain disputed and have not been proven in court.
Former political challenger AJ Kern has been among those pressing the issue.
Kern has argued that Omar’s citizenship timeline may be inaccurate and previously filed a Federal Election Commission complaint seeking documentation of Omar’s citizenship.
That complaint was dismissed.
The renewed attention comes one day after Homeland Security Investigations agents searched Omar’s Washington, D.C.-area home under a warrant authorized by a federal judge.
Agents were seen removing boxes from the residence.
Federal authorities have described the search as part of an ongoing criminal investigation involving possible false statements and immigration-related fraud connected to paperwork completed when Omar was a child, per Trending Politics.
Investigators are reportedly examining records involving naturalization and derivative citizenship.
No criminal charges have been announced against Omar.
She has denied wrongdoing and has described scrutiny of her immigration history as politically motivated.
Her office did not respond to questions about the older public records at the time of the reporting.
The newly disclosed 2019 correspondence does not by itself establish that Omar lied about her age or citizenship.
It does, however, show that her congressional staff actively sought to change the birth year listed in government and public reference records after she had already been elected to Congress.