Is there a non-U.S. citizen occupying a seat representing U.S. citizens in the U.S. Congress?

That's the mind-boggling question raised with Rep. Ilhan Omar's citizenship now under scrutiny in the wake of this week's federal raid on her residence, in what officials descibed as a criminal case.

According to the Washington Post, which tried to downplay it as a paperwork matter:

The federal investigation that prompted the search of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s D.C. residence on Monday centers on claims that she or her late father may have lied on decades-old immigration paperwork to secure legal status and eventually U.S. citizenship, three people familiar with the matter said.

Omar — a Minnesota Democrat who was born in Somalia and fled civil war there with her family before eventually immigrating to the United States in 1995 — has repeatedly rejected such allegations, which have circulated in conservative media for years. She dismissed them again in a statement Monday as “baseless lies and smear campaigns.”

The story has several layers, each more sordid than the last.