by Sharon Rondeau | The Post and Email
On September 18, AJ Kern, a former DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor) primary challenger to the congressional seat currently occupied by Ilhan Omar (D-MN5), filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) with the purpose of obtaining an “advisory opinion” on Omar’s having raised funds for federal campaigns while possibly lacking the requirement of U.S. citizenship.
Her complaint begins:
In 2022, Kern was one of several Democrat primary contenders in Minnesota’s fifth congressional district with an election date of August 9. After directly requesting the Somali-born incumbent Omar release documentation demonstrating she is a U.S. citizen and receiving no response, Kern filed a lawsuit to compel production of Omar’s proof of eligibility.
Her suit also named as defendants a third primary contender, Don Samuels, as well as Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon. Samuels, who was born in Jamaica, also had not proffered any evidence of having naturalized as a U.S. citizen and similarly did not respond to Kern’s request for it.
Simon, Kern claimed, failed in his duty to properly vet foreign-born candidates for meeting the U.S. Constitution’s requirements for office, which for federal partisan candidates includes U.S. citizenship for a certain number of years. While she was a candidate, Simon’s staff confirmed it does not seek proof of citizenship for anyone foreign-born seeking elected office. “There’s no authorization in the statutes for us to double-check on people, verify their status…They sign the affidavit; that’s their certification statement, and that’s just the way it is right now. There is no law that requires us…because there is no law telling us to do that, we would be violating the laws by checking up on people, ” the clerk told Kern upon her in-person visit.
As The Post & Email reported, Kern’s lawsuit was dismissed July 1, 2022 by Judge Bridget Ann Sullivan on the grounds that Congress has “final say” on the qualifications of its members and that Kern’s action was filed prematurely.
In June Kern received a response to a FOIA request she filed approximately one year prior with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for naturalization records for Nur Omar Mohamed, Omar’s father. Kern made the request based on Omar’s longstanding claim of having become a derivative U.S. citizen at the age of 17 resulting from her father’s purported naturalization in 2000.
In June 2020, Omar reported Mohamed passed away from complications of COVID-19. Therefore, Kern reasoned, his naturalization information would not be subject to the customary privacy restrictions.
Omar’s mother reportedly died when she was very young and still living in Somalia, where she grew up in relative comfort until the Somalian civil war erupted in 1991, displacing the family to a Kenyan refugee camp for several years.
Reportedly arriving in the U.S. in 1995 from Kenya, Omar and Mohamed first settled in Virginia, later relocating to Minnesota, where Omar reported feeling at home among the growing Somali community. Early in life she became interested in politics, attended North Dakota State University, and went on to serve one term in the Minnesota House of Representatives. In 2018, she successfully ran to represent the state’s fifth congressional district and has since been twice re-elected.
“Minnesota’s first Somali-American state representative has again made history: She is now the country’s first Somali-American elected to Congress,” reported the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on November 7, 2018.
Kern recently related her findings to date regarding Omar on her website, writing, in part:
Absolutely no one… Not Congress. Not the Minnesota Secretary of State. Not the Democrat-Socialist party of Minnesota. Not even the Federal Election Commission (FEC) have verified Ilhan Abdullahi Omar’s U.S. citizenship.
No one is the gatekeeper.
American citizens are unable to verify that foreign-born federal candidates are, in fact, naturalized citizens meeting Constitutional qualifiers of Article I, Section 2, Clause 2:
“No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.”
Government should be transparent. American citizens should have the ability to verify that all foreign-born citizens actually do meet all U.S. constitutional qualifications before running for office, especially federal office. But, currently the American people do not have that right. We are not able to ensure that our founding document, the U.S. Constitution, is being respected.
…A June 20, 2023 letter from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) federal agency confirms that Ilhan Omar could not have naturalized as a 17 year old minor in 2000, as she claims, because after a thorough records search there are no documents of her father naturalizing.
Last year, Kern produced a video claiming that in May 2019, Omar “changed her birth year from 1981 to 1982 just two days after I published this video on social media…”
As Kern verified and The Post & Email reported, Omar’s congressional office issued a request to the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library to change her stated birth date from October 4, 1981 to October 4, 1982, which would have made her seventeen years of age through most of the year 2000.
Kern noted in her video that when an immigrant turns eighteen, he or she is no longer able to derive citizenship from a parent who naturalizes. “Until Ilhan Omar provides proof of her U.S. citizenship, rather than thinking of her as a dual citizen, we will think of her as a Somali nationalist. Ilhan Omar, the American people have a right to know,” Kern punctuated the video.
Kern obtained confirmation from the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library that Omar’s office had, in fact, made the request for the change in her birth year.
In its response to Kern’s complaint, the FEC stated she could submit “additional information” on her claim should it become available. In a letter dated September 6, 2023, USCIS Information Management Liaison Section Chief of the “DHS-USCIS-IRIS-NRC-Immigration Information Integrity Branch (IIIB)” Douglas C. Marr confirmed to Kern that USCIS possesses no record of Nur Omar Mohamed’s naturalization by enclosing a “Certificate of Nonexistence of Record” for the subject individual.
Kern did not receive the certificate until late last month, after which she submitted it to the FEC to augment her complaint.
The fifth and final page of Kern’s additional documentation to the FEC contains Omar’s June 5, 2018 Affidavit of Candidacy affirming that, in regard to her seeking a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, she “will be an inhabitant of this state when elected and I will be at least thirty years old and a citizen of the United States for not less than nine years on the next January 3rd, or if filed at special election, within twenty-one days after the election.”
As The Post & Email reported, “In 2019, a finding by the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board declared Omar had ‘repeatedly’ misused campaign funds for personal matters, for which she was ordered to reimburse her campaign committee just under $3,500 and pay a $500 fine.”
Questions regarding Omar’s marriages have been raised but as yet remain unanswered.
