After Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was attacked at a Minneapolis town hall on Tuesday night and sprayed with an unknown substance from a syringe, President Donald Trump suggested that she may have orchestrated the incident.  “No. I don’t think about her. I think she’s a fraud. I really don’t think about that,” Trump said when asked if he had seen the video of the attack. “She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.”  Oh, but he does think about her. The attack on Omar took place the same night Trump mentioned her while delivering a speech in Iowa ahead of this year’s midterm elections.  “We need people to come in legally, but they have to show that they can love our country—not hate our country,” Trump said Tuesday regarding immigration policy. “Not like Ilhan Omar.” He continued: “She comes from a country that’s a disaster… It’s not even a country, okay. It barely has a government. I don’t think it does. They’re good at one thing. Pirates.”  > Trump on Omar: "She's always talking about 'the Constitution provides me w/ > the following.' She comes from a country that's a disaster. It's not even a > country. They're good at one thing – pirates. But they don't do that anymore > bc they get same treatment from us as the drug dealers. Boom Boom Boom" > > — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-01-27T23:13:41.283Z Omar was born in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu and fled the country with her family during the Somali Civil War. She spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before moving to the US in 1995. Omar and her family eventually settled in Minnesota, home to the largest Somali communities in the country. Trump has targeted Somali immigrants since at least last November when he promised to end Temporary Protected Status for Somalis living in Minnesota, linking all communities to fraud in the state.  But Omar has continued to fight back. “ICE cannot be reformed, it cannot be rehabilitated, we must abolish ICE for good, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem must resign or face impeachment,” Omar said during the Tuesday town hall, just before the man attacked her. She wound up to strike back at the man before he was subdued by security. Omar was not injured, and, later on Tuesday night, she wrote on X, “I’m ok. I’m a survivor so this small agitator isn’t going to intimidate me from doing my work.”  The man was arrested and booked at the county jail for third-degree assault, according to Minneapolis police spokesperson Trevor Folke. > Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) assaulted during town hall meeting: "Here's the reality > that people like this ugly man don't understand; we are Minnesota strong and > we will stay resilient in the face of whatever they might throw at us." > pic.twitter.com/Ud5l3yP4lQ > > — CSPAN (@cspan) January 28, 2026 And Omar continued her speech after a short break. “I learned at a young age, you don’t give in to threats,” Omar told the audience. “You look them in the face and you stand strong.” The incident involving Omar isn’t the only recent example of heightened threats and attacks. A man allegedly assaulted Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fl.) last week. Frost said that the man punched him after saying that Trump would deport him.  And according to data from the US Capitol Police released on Tuesday, investigated threats—which include “concerning statements, behaviors, and communications directed against Members of Congress, their families, staff, and the Capitol Complex”—rose from 9,474 in 2024 to 14,938 in 2025.

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar said Sunday that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulled over her son this weekend and asked him to prove his citizenship.  In an interview with WCCO, a CBS affiliate based in Minneapolis, the Somali-born congresswoman said she’s feared for her 20-year-old son since President Donald Trump and ICE began targeting Somali immigrants in the Twin Cities area earlier this month.  “Yesterday, after he made a stop at Target, he did get pulled over by ICE agents, and once he was able to produce his passport ID, they did let him go,” Omar, a refugee from Somalia, told WCCO’s Esme Murphy.  Since descending on Minnesota, home of the largest Somali community in the US, ICE agents have detained several US citizens, according to local officials and video evidence. The operation, “Metro Surge,” has prompted area residents to begin carrying around their passports and even avoid going outside, according to The New York Times. This includes Omar’s son, who “always carries” his passport with him, the four-term congresswoman told Murphy.  The incident described by Omar occurred one day after she announced that she was launching two formal inquiries into the Trump administration’s “escalating attacks on Somali communities in Minnesota and across the country,” her website reads. In a December 12 letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE acting director Todd Lyons, Omar wrote that “constituents, advocates, and local officials have documented blatant racial profiling, an egregious level of unnecessary force, and activity that appears designed for social media rather than befitting a law enforcement agency.” > “I kept calling to see if he was okay, if he had any run-ins, and he wasn’t > answering,” Omar told WCCO. Among other questions, Omar wants Noem and Lyons to answer: “How many arrests were the result of judicial warrants?” “How can the public report potential violations of constitutional rights, and how will those be investigated?” and “How is ICE ensuring due process protections while a large volume of new officers are on the ground?” Amid a barrage of xenophobic remarks about Somali people in recent weeks, President Trump has repeatedly targeted Omar, who arrived in the US as a refugee in the 1990s and became a citizen in 2000. These attacks go back to Trump’s first term, when Omar was first elected to Congress. “She’s garbage,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting December 2. “Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.” In that meeting, the president also said that Somalia “stinks” and that immigrants from the country “come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch.” “We don’t want them in our country,” he said multiple times. At a Pennsylvania rally this past Tuesday night, Trump called Somalia “about the worst country in the world” and mocked Omar. “I love this Ilhan Omar, whatever the hell her name is, with the little turban. I love her, she comes in, does nothing but bitch,” he said. “She should get the hell out, throw her the hell out,” Trump continued as his supporters chanted “GET HER OUT!”  In her interview on Sunday, Omar said ICE had previously entered a local mosque where her son prays, before leaving without making any arrests last Friday. Omar said that throughout that day she was watching videos of ICE stops in the same neighborhood as the mosque. “I kept calling to see if he was okay, if he had any run-ins, and he wasn’t answering,” Omar told WCCO. “Eventually, that night I did get a chance to talk to him and I had to remind him just how worried I am.”