US Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) (R) reacts after being sprayed with an unknown substance by a man as she hosted a town hall in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 27, 2026.Octavio Jones/AFP/Getty
After Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was attacked at a Minneapolis town hall on Tuesday night and sprayed with an unknown substance from a syringe, President Donald Trump suggested that she may have orchestrated the incident.
“No. I don’t think about her. I think she’s a fraud. I really don’t think about that,” Trump said when asked if he had seen the video of the attack. “She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.”
Oh, but he does think about her. The attack on Omar took place the same night Trump mentioned her while delivering a speech in Iowa ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
“We need people to come in legally, but they have to show that they can love our country—not hate our country,” Trump said Tuesday regarding immigration policy. “Not like Ilhan Omar.”
He continued: “She comes from a country that’s a disaster… It’s not even a country, okay. It barely has a government. I don’t think it does. They’re good at one thing. Pirates.”
Omar was born in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu and fled the country with her family during the Somali Civil War. She spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before moving to the US in 1995. Omar and her family eventually settled in Minnesota, home to the largest Somali communities in the country.
Trump has targeted Somali immigrants since at least last November when he promised to end Temporary Protected Status for Somalis living in Minnesota, linking all communities to fraud in the state.
But Omar has continued to fight back.
“ICE cannot be reformed, it cannot be rehabilitated, we must abolish ICE for good, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem must resign or face impeachment,” Omar said during the Tuesday town hall, just before the man attacked her.
She wound up to strike back at the man before he was subdued by security. Omar was not injured, and, later on Tuesday night, she wrote on X, “I’m ok. I’m a survivor so this small agitator isn’t going to intimidate me from doing my work.”
The man was arrested and booked at the county jail for third-degree assault, according to Minneapolis police spokesperson Trevor Folke.
And Omar continued her speech after a short break. “I learned at a young age, you don’t give in to threats,” Omar told the audience. “You look them in the face and you stand strong.”
The incident involving Omar isn’t the only recent example of heightened threats and attacks. A man allegedly assaulted Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fl.) last week. Frost said that the man punched him after saying that Trump would deport him.
And according to data from the US Capitol Police released on Tuesday, investigated threats—which include “concerning statements, behaviors, and communications directed against Members of Congress, their families, staff, and the Capitol Complex”—rose from 9,474 in 2024 to 14,938 in 2025.
