U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar on Sunday responded to the son of a 9/11 victim who criticized the congresswomen last week on the anniversary of the attacks.
Nicholas Haros Jr., whose mother died in the World Trade Center, spoke at the ceremony on the 18th anniversary of the attacks wearing a shirt that said “Some people did something,” a reference to comments Omar earlier this year. “Today I am here to respond to you exactly who did what to whom,” he said.
While speaking to the Council on American-Islamic Relations in March, Omar said the group was founded because “some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.” The comments sparked immediate backlash.
On Sunday, Omar was once again asked about her comments and those of Haros while appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation.
“9/11 was an attack on all Americans. It was an attack on all of us, and I certainly could not understand the weight of the pain that the families of the victims of 9/11 must feel,” Omar said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
But, she said, we should also remember that “many Americans found themselves now having their civil rights stripped from them,” in the aftermath of the attacks.
“So what I was speaking to was that as a Muslim, not only was I suffering as an American who was attacked on that day, but the next day I woke up as my fellow Americans were now treating me as suspect,” she told Face the Nation.
