After a week of attacks by President Trump that culminated in a chant of “send her back” at one of his re-election rallies, Representative Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born Democrat from Minnesota, returned to her district on Thursday evening to a hero’s welcome.
About 100 supporters mobbed Ms. Omar at Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport with shouts of “Welcome home!” and “We have your back!” They waved signs and applauded as the congresswoman struck a defiant tone in the face of Mr. Trump’s increasingly vitriolic rhetoric about her.
“When I said I was the president’s nightmare, well you’re watching it now,” Ms. Omar said through a bullhorn. “We are going to continue to be a nightmare to this president, because his policies are a nightmare to us. And we are not deterred, we are not frightened, we are ready.”
Mr. Trump has latched on to Ms. Omar, one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, as a focal point for rallying his supporters around a re-election campaign that appears destined to be dominated by immigration and nativism. Her colorful hijabs have made her a recognizable new face in the House, and her criticism of Israeli and Trump administration policies has attracted the attention of the president and his allies, and even some Democrats.