The revelation follows a letter from Omar's lawyers to federal prosecutors challenging the legality of Monday's five hour search by Homeland Security Investigations and demanding the immediate return of her seized phone, passport, computers and notebooks. Her legal team accused agents of ignoring constitutional limits placed on the warrant by US Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh and called the inquiry a "vindictive, retributive and politically motivated investigation."
According to the New York Times, the home search was triggered by family text messages investigators found on a phone seized earlier this year from Omar's sister, Sahra Noor, who is among the relatives served with more than 15 federal grand jury subpoenas in Minnesota. US officials told the Wall Street Journal that the probe, internally named "World War Eleven," seeks to build a case to strip Omar of her US citizenship and deport her to Somalia by examining whether she or her late father misstated her birth year as 1982 instead of 1981 to qualify for derivative citizenship as a minor in 2000, while US Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office is separately investigating why business assets in Omar's financial disclosures dropped from up to $30 million to under $100,000.