"This is probably the weakest our democracy has been since the Civil War, and I think it's the only time our democracy has been threatened by a president," she said, referring to President Donald Trump. "This man has no regard for democratic ideals, no regard for democratic institutions that exist in the country. He has no regard for the public, the constitution...so we're in pretty bad shape."
Omar, who's running for reelection this year, was in Colorado for the weekend to raise money and support for the Democratic Party ahead of election season, according to her staff. She was the keynote speaker alongside Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren at the annual Obama Gala hosted by Colorado Young Democrats, a fundraising event that took place a few hours after she appeared on Fard's show. She told Fard during the podcast it was her first time in Colorado.
Omar gained national recognition after winning the race for Minnesota's 5th Congressional District in 2018, two years after Trump's first election victory. She and the Dem squad were one of the most diverse slates of Congressional candidates to win an election. When she won her seat, Omar became the first Somali-American and one of the first two Muslim women elected into Congress alongside fellow squad member Rachida Tlaib from Michigan. Omar's congressional district is based in Minneapolis, where George Floyd died in police custody in 2020.
"I fight for a more peaceful, equitable and just world," Omar said on Saturday. "My work has been advocating against war. We're seeing war raging in Ukraine, we're seeing a genocide take place in Gaza, we're seeing a civil war in Sudan."
Omar's shared her feelings about Israel and Palestine during the interview, which came a day before shocking anti-Semitic attacks in Boulder against a group calling for the release of hostages in Gaza that left twelve people, most of whom were elderly, burned or badly injured.
Fard is well-known in Denver for his activism in support of local Black communities and the Five Points neighborhood. The Free Think Zone hosted Omar at Brother Jeff's Cultural Center, 2836 Welton Street, where he aired the show on Facebook Live. Fard's previous guests include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Buttigieg and Aurora Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky; he started the show started thirteen years ago.
Omar's shared her feelings about Israel and Palestine during the interview, which came a day before shocking anti-Semitic attacks in Boulder against a group calling for the release of hostages in Gaza that left twelve people, most of whom were elderly, burned or badly injured.
Fard is well-known in Denver for his activism in support of local Black communities and the Five Points neighborhood. The Free Think Zone hosted Omar at Brother Jeff's Cultural Center, 2836 Welton Street, where he aired the show on Facebook Live. Fard's previous guests include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Buttigieg and Aurora Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky; he started the show started thirteen years ago.
Omar's politics are similar to those of other members of the squad, like New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who attracted more than 30,000 people to her rally in Denver with progressive Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in March. About fifty people crowded the studio for Omar's appearance on the Free Think Zone; she spoke for nearly three hours through the podcast and a conversation with the audience afterwards.
Deportations Hurting the U.S. Reputation
During the show, Omar brought up the deportation of immigrants to the CECOT prison in El Salvador, which is known as a high-security prison built to incarcerate alleged gang members. Advocacy groups like the Washington Office of Latin America and Vera Institute estimate upwards of 300 people have been deported to this prison since Trump returned to office on January 20, nearly all of them Venezuelan. Omar said that deporting people to foreign countries is giving the U.S. a bad rap."It reshapes our identity as a country. We're seen as a beacon of hope. We're seen as a land of immigrants. We're seen as what other countries aspire to be," the congresswoman said. "When people are reading headlines or seeing images of people being snatched from the streets...they know that we might be ignorant of what the definition of deportation is, but people around the world are not. You do not get deported to a country that is not of your origin."
Congresswoman Omar spoke alongside Brother Jeff Fard, a Denver activist known for his work in the local Black community.
Bennito L. Kelty
Omar added that the deportations happening under Trump are illegal because they often don't give immigrants due process or the constitutional right to have their case argued in court. "Due process is for everyone who is on our soil," Omar said. "You don't have to be a citizen, you don't have to be a legal resident, you don't have to have a documented status in order to able to access your due process rights."
She also touched on federal immigration raids. Since Trump returned to office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has carried out three large raids in Colorado and reportedly arrested immigrants who presented asylum paperwork after bursting into people's houses with smoke and flash grenades. Omar said that Trump is using ICE raids to "terrorize" people.
Refugee Resettlement
When a civil war began unfolding in Somalia in the late 1980s, Omar was about eight years old. She remembers the government suddenly shutting down and children her age fighting in the war."The kids I was just playing with now were carrying rifles," she recalled. "All of a sudden, your life was not the one you knew. The comforts of having food and shelter, all those things disappear because markets shut down."
As violence intensified, her family fled to a refugee camp in Kenya before arriving in the United States in 1995. She tied her story into Trump's current freeze on refugee resettlement. An executive order Trump signed the day after returning to office stopped refugee resettlement, a legal pathway into the U.S. for people abroad fleeing persecution. Since February, refugee resettlement hasn't fully resumed except to a select few groups, like Afrikaners from South Africa who Trump says are being persecuted because they're white.
"White South Africans still have a huge dominance in the country. [Trump] is completely racist and a horrible human being," Omar argued. "There's been a lot of hilarious videos coming out from White South Africans in South Africa about how crazy and stupid our president sounds."
Omar said she wouldn't be able to immigrate to the U.S. today like she did thirty years ago. "There would be no Ilhan if it was today that my family came" because the refugee resettlement system "is essentially being dismantled," she explained. She adds the freeze on resettlement that's been in place for just a few months will have lasting impacts too.
"The level of harm that the current policies are causing is really generational," she said. "There are more people displaced today ever in the history of the world."
Key to Success for a Grassroots Campaign
Omar said she's never funded her campaign with an independent expenditure political action committee, also known as a Super PAC, which is a way to raise unlimited funds for a campaign. Fard applauded her because he criticized Super PACs for giving an unfair advantage to candidates who favor corporations and billionaires."Money is pivotal. It's almost like you have to have a billionaire friend or two just to get in the game," Fard said. "How do ordinary people without all of that still compete?"
Omar responded by saying that a network of friends and involvement in the community is the best bet for beating candidates with deep pockets.
"I had a strong, dedicated friend network that believed in my ability to win and represent the community," she said. "It is important to be rooted in your community and build these lasting relationships with folks; it's important to show up for others so they show up for you."
Omar added that friends "pressured" her to run for office because she had been politically active since she was fourteen years old. Constant activism is going to be the best way to pave a path to elected office, she noted.
"Be involved in your community, be involved in what is happening around you," Omar said. "The day might come when you're called to be that leader."
Congresswoman Omar spent nearly three hours talking at the Brother Jeff Cultural Center and stopped to talk to people and pose for pictures.
Bennito L. Kelty
Views on War in Gaza
On Sunday, June 1, the day after Omar made her appearance on the Free Think Zone, twelve people were attacked with Molotov cocktails by a man yelling "Free Palestine" during a march to free Israeli hostages. The suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national national living in Colorado Springs, now faces federal hate crime and numerous attempted murder charges after telling officers he'd been planning the attack for more than a year and would do it again; his wife and five children were arrested by ICE on June 3, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Colorado Democratic lawmakers like Representative Junie Joseph from Boulder and State Senator Julie Gonzalez from Denver are dealing with backlash for hosting a reception dinner for Omar on Sunday, June 2. Colorado Representative Anthony Hartsook from Parker condemned Colorado Democrats in a Tuesday statement where he called Omar "a notorious anti-Semite."
Omar and other members of the squad, including Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib, posted their sympathies on social media on Tuesday, June 3, which some criticized as a slow response.
"I’m holding the victims and families in Boulder, Colorado in my heart," Omar said on X. "Violence against anyone is never acceptable. We must reject hatred and harm in all its forms."
Omar has a history of strongly condemning Israel and its war in Gaza, and it was the topic she spoke about the most on Saturday. In February 2023, before the war on Gaza started, she was kicked off the House Foreign Affairs committee for harsh criticism of Israel, but she considers the ousting "a badge of honor," she said on the Free Think Zone.
"In Congress we can't talk about the apartheid that exists in Palestine," she said. "We can't talk about the genocide that the Israelis are committing in Gaza."
While speaking with Fard, she accused Israel multiple times of "genocide" and "apartheid" against Palestinians and the U.S. of being "complicit in the genocide in Gaza."
Her views on the subject have made her a target for hate, Omar told her audience on Saturday. She said that more than two dozen people are currently incarcerated for making threats against her as a congresswoman, mainly in response to her "outspokenness" against Israel.
"Democrats, Republicans and the president were all condemning me for it," she said. "That did cause a lot of threats to my life. I've never been physically hurt, alhamdulillah, thank god."
