Ilhan Omar’s staff asked Minnesota library to change birth year from 1981 to 1982, records show

WASHINGTON, DC: Rep Ilhan Omar’s congressional staff requested a change to her birth year in Minnesota public records in May 2019, according to emails reviewed by the New York Post.

The records had listed the Minnesota Democrat’s birth year as 1981 before the request changed it to 1982, just months after she entered Congress.

The change has resurfaced amid allegations questioning her immigration history and a reported federal raid on her Washington, DC, home. However, Omar and her office have repeatedly denied allegations of immigration fraud.

Ilhan Omar’s birth year changed in 2019 records

Omar’s birth year was listed as 1981 in the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library’s records during her time in the state legislature and for several months after she began serving in Congress in January 2019.

The same year was also listed on reference websites, including Wikipedia and the BBC.

The library’s director described the request in a May 24, 2019, email written shortly after the records were changed. “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 director wrote.

The email also stated that “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. As of today, the birth year has not been corrected on the two sites I mentioned."

In a separate email, the director explained that the earlier date had been included without independent documentation because it was “widely available, in Wikipedia and the Biographical Directory, and so we added that birthdate without documentation.”

The report said the change followed the circulation of a video by a political opponent alleging that Omar had misrepresented her age. The change has since become part of broader claims questioning whether she qualified for US citizenship through her father. 

Omar has firmly rejected the allegations, describing the scrutiny as politically motivated.

“For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation,” she said in a statement posted on X on Monday, October 12.

Ilhan Omar’s US citizenship claims face scrutiny

Omar has said she obtained derivative US citizenship through her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, whom she has stated became a naturalized citizen in 2000.

In a September 2018 interview, she said that she “became a citizen actually before I turned 18,” before adding, “My father became a citizen and so I got my citizenship through that process.”

The renewed scrutiny centres on whether her father’s naturalization and her age at the time met the requirements for derivative citizenship. Critics have argued that the reported change in her birth year from 1981 to 1982 could affect their claims about her eligibility.

AJ Kern, a former political opponent who challenged Omar in the 2022 Democratic primary for Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District, questioned her account of obtaining citizenship through her father.

“For derivative citizenship, two things have to be true, one, her father had to naturalize; and two, she still had to be a minor, and what I have found is that it’s highly likely that neither of those things are true,” Kern told the outlet in a phone conversation.