Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) is opening up about her need for security, sharing an anonymous death threat she said she received saying the Democratic lawmaker would likely be killed at the Minnesota State Fair.
“I hate that we live in a world where you have to be protected from fellow humans. I hated it as a child living through war and I hate it now,” Omar tweeted on Wednesday in response to a post that showed a bodyguard standing behind her as she spoke at an event in Minnesota.
“But until deranged people like this stop threatening my life and the lives of others, I have to accept the reality of having security.”
Omar’s tweet included a photo of an anonymous death threat she received. In the threat, the writer says that the lawmaker will “not be going back to Washington” and that her “life will end before your ‘Vacation’ ends.” It goes on to state that she wouldn’t “die alone” and that a “very capable person with a very big ‘Gun'” would target her.
{mosads}“They say we can’t get the Somali Stink out of the clean Minnesota air, but we’re going to enjoy the adventure,” it reads.
Omar shared the letter just hours after Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore called for the first-term congresswoman to “go back to Somalia.” Moore said that Omar should go back from “whence she came” following the Alabama Republican Party’s approval of a resolution calling for her expulsion from Congress.
Omar, a Somali refugee who arrived in the U.S. as a child with her family before becoming a U.S. citizen, was one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress last year. She has been outspoken on a number of issues, including her opposition to President Trump.
She said in April that she had received an increase in death threats after Trump promoted a video that featured images of the 9/11 terrorist attack with Omar’s comments spliced in between.
The president then in July told Omar and a group of minority congresswomen to “go back” to where they came from, a comment that the House formally condemned as racist.
Moore, who is campaigning for the Alabama Senate again, echoed Trump’s remarks on Wednesday, saying “Trump was right, she should go back to Somalia from whence she came.”
His divisive comments came after Omar had ripped Moore as an “accused child molester” in response to the Alabama GOP’s resolution to remove her from the House.
“Sorry, [Alabama GOP], but this is a representative democracy,” Omar tweeted. “I was elected with 78% of the vote by the people of Minnesota’s 5th District, not the Alabama Republican Party.”