The following is the transcript of the interview with Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Dec. 7, 2025.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we’re joined now by Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Welcome to the program.
REP. ILHAN OMAR: Thank you, Margaret.
REP. OMAR: We have a lot to get to with you, but I want to pick up on where the Treasury Secretary just left off. He alleged that people who were tied to you or your campaign were involved in this broad, brazen scheme to rip off the Minnesota state welfare system. Do you want to respond to that? Do you know what he is referring to?
REP. OMAR: I really don’t, and I don’t think the Secretary himself understands what he’s referring to. We obviously had people who were able to donate to our campaign that were involved. We sent that money back a couple years ago. And actually, I was one of the first members of Congress to send a letter to the Secretary of Ag asking them to look into what I thought was a reprehensible fraud that was occurring within the program.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So this was just for our audience. The Biden-era Justice Department called it the largest COVID fraud scheme in the country, and this was pocketing COVID-era welfare funds, more than a billion dollars in taxpayer money that was stolen. It was pretty, pretty shocking. Of the 87 people charged, all but eight are of Somali descent, and that has added to the spotlight being put specifically on your community. Why do you think this fraud was allowed to get so widespread?
REP. OMAR: I want to say, you know, this also has an impact on Somalis, because we are also taxpayers in Minnesota. We also could have benefited from the program and the money that was stolen. And so it’s been really frustrating for people to not acknowledge the fact that we’re, you know, we’re also as Minnesotans as taxpayers, really upset and angry about the fraud that has occurred.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So do you think, though, that there was a failure by the Democratic state government to police itself? This is a brazen fraudulent activity here.
REP. OMAR: Yeah, and that is what I alluded to in my letter that I had sent to the Secretary of Ag was to see where things were going wrong. How can this amount of money disappear fraudulently without there being alarms being set off? And it is something that you know, we have to continue to investigate. We have to continue to ask those questions.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Because, as you know, one of the initial defenses by the organization at the heart of the fraud, Feeding Our Future, was to claim the probe was due to racism. Do you think that this was all about negligence, or that it was like political fear of alienating the Somali community?
REP. OMAR: So you have to remember that the woman who led the program is a Caucasian woman, and that was her way of making sure that this would continue to happen by using whatever rhetoric that was available to her. We do know that when the money was stopped, they did sue the AG. Attorney General Keith Ellison defended the department in that lawsuit. It was a judge that said it should contin- that money should continue to go out. And so this wasn’t something that people were not looking at. There was always those, those alarms, and we will continue to understand where things might have gone wrong as these investigations continue, and as these fraudsters are prosecuted and sent to jail.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, it’s going to have impact for your community, because we’ve already heard that the head of Medicare and Medicaid say they’re going to have a new policy that applies to Minnesota. You heard the Treasury Secretary say they’re investigating. But there’s another thread here, because House Republicans and the Treasury Secretary just now talked about a link to terrorism, a possible link. He said they’re just now beginning to look into it. How confident are you that that’s a false claim?
REP. OMAR: I’m pretty confident at the moment, because there are people who have been prosecuted and who have been sentenced. If there was a linkage in that, the money that they had stolen going to terrorism, then that is a failure of the FBI and our court system in not figuring that out and basically charging them with- with these, with these charges. And so I do know that for many years, this sort of like alarm that there is money being transferred through the airport in bags and going to terrorism has all- that accusation has always existed. There has never been here and there in those accusations. But if that is the case, if money from U.S. tax dollars is being sent to help with terrorism in Somalia, we want to know and we want those people prosecuted, and we want to make sure that that doesn’t ever happen again.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So there are 80,000 people of Somali descent in your state, but the President has been very focused not just on them, but on you. In this extraordinary cabinet meeting, he said, Somalis, quote, “come from hell.” “They complain and they do nothing but bitch.” Take a listen.
[SOUND ON TAPE BEGINS]PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: These are people that do nothing but complain. They complain, and from where they came from, they’ve got nothing.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: …We don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”
[SOUND ON TAPE ENDS]MARGARET BRENNAN: That knocking is vehement agreement from his Cabinet members there. I just wonder what the reaction is in your district to have that from the highest office in the land.
REP. OMAR: It’s disgusting. It’s completely disgusting. These are Americans that he is calling garbage. And we feel like there is an unhealthy obsession that he has on the Somali community, and an unhealthy and creepy obsession that he has with me. I think it is also really important for us to remember that this kind of hateful rhetoric and this level of dehumanizing can lead to dangerous actions by people who listen to the president.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And 95% of the Somalis in your state are U.S. citizens.
REP. OMAR: Yes.
MARAGARET BRENNAN: Just for clarity there. But the president has restricted all immigration processing, including asylum claims from Somalis already on U.S. soil, along with 18 other countries. ICE reports it has rounded up about 19 people, and they put out press releases with the images of about five of them that they say are the worst of the worst is that the entirety of the crackdown to date?
REP. OMAR: Yeah, so far we know of the people that they have picked up in Minnesota, about five of them are Somalis, and from what I have read and from the people that I’ve spoken to, all of them had already had orders of removal. So these are not people who are undocumented, but people who have committed crimes and who should have already been sent out of the country.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you something else that the architect of the President’s immigration policy, Stephen Miller, said. On Thanksgiving day he posted, “No magic transformation occurs when failed states cross borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions. and terrors, of their broken homelands.”
What do you make of this argument of failure to assimilate and sort of ruining America. How do you understand this?
REP. OMAR: I mean, when I think about Stephen Miller and his white supremist rhetoric, it reminds me–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –That’s how you hear it–
REP. OMAR: Yes, it reminds me of the way the Nazis described Jewish people in Germany. And you know, as we know, there have been many immigrants who have tried to come to the United States who have turned back, you know, one of them being Jewish immigrants. We know the way that people were described who were coming from Ireland, Irish immigrants. We know the way in which people were described back then, when there were Italian immigrants. And to me, you know, we’re, we’re, yes, of course, ethnically Somali, we are in this country as Americans, we are citizens, we are a productive part of this nation, and we will continue to be.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Congresswoman Omar, thank you for your time today. And we’ll be right back with a lot more Face the Nation. Stay with us.
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