A man has been accused of assaulting Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) at a town hall earlier this week in Minneapolis, according to a federal complaint filed on Thursday.
The suspect used a syringe filled with a mixture of apple cider vinegar and water to spray the congresswoman, court documents state.
Omar, who has been a frequent critic of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in Minnesota, had just finished calling for the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem when the suspect approached her with the liquid, the affidavit states.
After squirting Omar with the liquid, he appeared to say, "You're splitting Minnesotans apart."
The account recorded by an FBI agent said the liquid stained the congresswoman's clothes and may have reached her face and right eye.
Following the incident, the suspect, a Minneapolis resident, was tackled by security officers and taken to a local jail, according to officials.
The suspect was charged with a federal crime related to assault or intimidation of federal officers. If convicted, he could face a maximum prison sentence of one year, unless the assault involved "physical contact with the victim," in which case the maximum sentence is 8 years in prison, according to the statute.
Omar continued with her town hall following the assault, afterwards saying that she felt "OK."
Omar, a member of the Squad of progressive Democrats, has been publicly criticized by President Donald Trump for years. In the past several weeks, Trump has called Omar a "fake sleazebag," and called for her to be thrown out of the US.
In November, Trump suggested that Omar “should go back" to Somalia, sharing to Truth Social a video of Omar addressing a crowd in Minnesota and saying “Somalia is our home" and referring to the President of Somalia as “our President".
During his first term, Trump frequently criticized Omar, including during the final stretch of the 2020 campaign, accusing her of “telling us how to run our country."
Omar is also notorious for her criticism of Israel, which goes back to 2019, when she came under fire after she suggested on Twitter that Republicans were attacking her at the behest of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.
She subsequently issued a half-hearted apology before ultimately deleting the controversial tweets.
In October of 2023, she caused an uproar and was criticized after she retweeted a photo of dead children and claimed that they died as a result of the IAF's bombing of Gaza. The photo was revealed to be a photo of children who died as a result of the Syrian army's nerve gas bombing.
She later was quick to blame Israel for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza which was ultimately proven to have been caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket.
In a subsequent incident, Omar used an expletive in response to pro-Israel protesters on Capitol Hill who called her out for her refusal to condemn Hamas and demanded that she “go to Gaza."