HSI agent covertly surveilled Rep. Ilhan Omar's town hall from vehicle with mismatched license plates

On the evening of Thursday, August 6, 2026, an undercover Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent was found in a vehicle with mismatched license plates outside a monthly town hall Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was hosting at the Richfield Community Center in Richfield, Minnesota. Richfield police providing security at the event grew suspicious after noticing a woman sitting in a Ford Explorer "monitoring the building," ran the vehicle's plates, and found they did not match the car. When an officer approached, the woman first identified herself as event security before acknowledging she was an HSI employee and said she was taking part in an unrelated undercover drug operation in the area, conducted without advance coordination with local police. Richfield Police separately confirmed with Omar's own security detail that the woman was not part of their team. After a call to her supervisor, the agent left.

Omar sent an oversight letter to Michael McCarthy, who oversees HSI's field office in St. Paul, demanding an explanation. She wrote that the agent had been parked in plain view of a sign advertising the town hall, and that HSI's continued use of mismatched plates violated Minnesota state law and contradicted an earlier commitment the agency had made to her office to discontinue the practice. "HSI's actions yesterday evening put an entire community at risk," Omar said, adding that Richfield police were forced to divert resources meant to protect her and her constituents toward investigating the agency's own vehicle.

Omar, a frequent target of the Trump administration's public statements — including calls for her deportation and imprisonment — wrote that the incident "emphasizes many Americans' growing concern that the Trump administration uses ICE to surveil political opponents and may interfere with our democracy."