Ilhan Omar has lived with threats long enough to recognize when words stop being abstract and start becoming weapons.
In an interview from her Washington office, the Minnesota congresswoman warned that Donald Trump’s repeated personal attacks and dehumanizing rhetoric are creating a climate ripe for political violence — one that extends far beyond her own safety.
“We’ve had people incarcerated for threatening to kill me,” Omar said. “We have people that are being prosecuted right now for threatening to kill me. That stays in the back of our minds.”
What worries her more, she said, is collateral damage.
“I also worry about those people finding someone who looks like me in Minneapolis or across the country and thinking it is me and harming them,” she added.
Her warning came days after Trump, speaking at a rally-style event in Pennsylvania, suggested Omar should be thrown out of the country. The remarks reignited chants of “Send her back!” from his supporters, following his revival of a long-debunked conspiracy theory that Omar married her brother to obtain US citizenship.
Omar, who arrived in the United States as a refugee at age 12 and became a citizen at 17, described Trump’s fixation as “vile” and an “unhealthy and creepy obsession.”
She said the pattern is familiar. When Trump faces political pressure or economic scrutiny, she argued, he reaches for bigotry.
“When things aren’t going well for him … cue the bigotry,” Omar said, accusing the president of deflecting from failures to address cost-of-living pressures. “It’s the same playbook and he just goes back to it; he doesn’t know anything else.”
In a joint interview, her husband, Tim Mynett, said the threats are not new. During Trump’s first term, he recalled, federal authorities required the couple to maintain a six-person security detail after identifying a plot against her.
“This isn’t our first rodeo,” Mynett said. “But it’s upsetting to see that this is where the leader of our country wants to draw the national attention.”
The broader data backs up Omar’s concern. US Capitol Police investigated 9,474 concerning statements and direct threats against members of Congress in 2024 — more than double the total recorded in 2017. The rise has coincided with a series of deadly attacks, including the killing of Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband earlier this year.
Omar said she has seen a direct correlation between Trump’s presence in power and the level of danger she faces. During Joe Biden’s presidency, she said, death threats against her “went to almost zero,” only to surge again afterward. In 2019, after Trump attacked Omar and other progressive Democrats known as “the Squad,” she received more death threats than any other member of Congress.
Trump has also expanded his attacks beyond Omar herself, recently describing Somali Americans as “garbage” and Somalia as “the worst country in the world.” Omar accused him of scapegoating an entire community over isolated fraud cases, noting that most Somalis in Minnesota are US citizens and many were born in the United States.
That climate, she said, has real-world consequences. In a separate interview with Minnesota outlet WCCO, Omar revealed that federal immigration agents recently pulled over her son as he was driving to a Target store. He was released only after producing his passport.
“He always carries it with him,” she said.
Despite the threats, Omar said she has no intention of retreating from public life. She plans to continue focusing on healthcare access, climate protections, democratic institutions, and affordability as next year’s midterm elections approach.
But she issued a blunt warning about the stakes.
“His presidency has exposed some weaknesses that exist,” Omar said. “While our institutions are strong, they are fragile to a dictatorship-like ruler.”
She added that the country must act now.
“We must do more to create stronger guardrails to make sure that the independence of our institutions remains,” she said.
