Ron DeSantis wants to deport Ilhan Omar

Joining a chorus of Republican outrage, Florida’s Governor is pushing to remove a Minnesota Democrat from the U.S. House, where he served for six years.

“Expel from Congress, denaturalize and deport,” urged Ron DeSantis about U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who is taking criticism from the Right for comments she made privileging Somalia over the United States.

As Newsweek notes, Omar recently told a crowd of Somali American constituents that she was “Somalian first, Muslim second” and “here to protect the interests of Somalia from inside the U.S. system.”

She also claimed that while she is in Congress, “no one will take Somalia’s sea. The United States will not back others to rob us.” There, she was objecting to a deal struck by Somaliland to give Ethiopia access to the ocean.

For his part, DeSantis has used Omar as a rhetorical target in the past. He invoked her name a couple of years back when dealing with his own controversy.

In 2022, when a group of neo-Nazis lined a bridge in eastern Orange County, hanging the swastika flag and banners — including a banner with the pro-Donald Trump slogan “Let’s Go Brandon” — and yelling profanities and antisemitic slurs at passing cars, DeSantis was more concerned with Democrats talking about the issue in remarks after the fact.

“These people, these Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me as if I had something to do with it, we’re not playing their game,” DeSantis said.

He added that he was “not going to have people try to smear me who belong to a political party that has elevated antisemites to the halls of Congress,” singling out Omar as an illustrative example of his claim.

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