The White House appeared to take aim at Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., on Monday with a social media post implying that she could return to Somalia after she dismissed concerns about being deported, as reported by The New York Post.
The post on X featured a photo of President Donald Trump waving from a McDonald’s drive-thru window, accompanied by a caption responding to a video of Omar downplaying the idea of deportation.
The image, taken in October 2024 during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania, showed President Trump greeting customers while working briefly at the fry station.
In the clip the White House was responding to, Omar said she was unconcerned about the notion of losing her citizenship or being deported. “I have no worry, I don’t know how they’d take away my citizenship and like deport me,” Omar said during an October appearance on “The Dean Obeidallah Show.”
“But I don’t even know like why that’s such a scary threat. Like I’m not the 8-year-old who escaped war anymore. I’m grown, my kids are grown. Like I could go live wherever I want.”
Omar’s office and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Fox News Digital.
Omar, who was born in Somalia, came to the United States as a refugee after her family fled the country’s civil war in 1991. The family spent several years in a refugee camp in Kenya before being granted asylum in the U.S. in 1995.
They first settled in Arlington, Virginia, before moving to Minneapolis in 1997. Omar became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000.
President Trump has been publicly critical of Omar for years, often questioning her loyalty to the United States and calling for her to “go back” to Somalia. On Nov. 1, Trump shared a video of Omar speaking Somali on Truth Social, writing, “She should go back!”
In remarks to reporters in September, Trump recounted a conversation with Somalia’s head of state. “You know, I met the head of Somalia, did you know that?” he said. “And I suggested that maybe he’d like to take her back. He said, ‘I don’t want her.’”
Omar responded by accusing the president of fabricating the story. “From denying Somalia had a president to making up a story, President Trump is a lying buffoon,” Omar said. “No one should take this embarrassing fool seriously.”
The exchange is the latest in a long-running feud between Omar and President Trump that began during his first term. In 2019, Trump criticized Omar and other members of “The Squad,” saying they should return to their “broken and crime infested” countries. Omar, in response, accused Trump of “stoking white nationalism” and promoting a “hate-filled agenda.”
Omar was elected to Congress in 2018 after serving two years in the Minnesota House of Representatives. She was the first Somali–American woman and one of the first Muslim women elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
