Ilhan Omar

Republican congressman Randy Fine, from Florida, is considering forcing a vote to expel Democratic counterpart Ilhan Omar from Congress, according to a new report.

According to Axios, he said he is "actively considering" the move. He pointed at a fundraising email from Omar's campaign suggesting he should be expelled for saying Muslims should be "destroyed."

"I won't send out fundraising emails calling for her expulsion. If I'm going to do that, you will see me bring the piece of paper. And I am actively considering that," Fine said. He went on to reference unproven allegations that she married her brother and what he described as her "general embrace of Muslim terror."

Omar has rejected the allegations and the potential effort to expel her, saying "I don't think anybody takes that man serious." "I don't think he takes himself serious, so nobody should worry about anything he says," she added.

Axios noted that Fine's eventual effort would likely fail because it needs a two-thirds vote in the House.

Omar has also been targeted by President Donald Trump during the past weeks. She said that the remarks, along with disparaging comments about Somali Americans have directly fueled threats against her life, arguing that his rhetoric follows a familiar pattern of what she described as "boilerplate xenophobia" that escalates real-world danger.

In an interview with The Guardian this week, Omar said Trump's recent remarks at a rally in Pennsylvania—where he mocked her hijab, repeated a false claim that she married her brother, and told supporters she should be expelled from the country—were "vile" and reflected "a really unhealthy and creepy obsession."

Omar added that there is "a clear correlation" between Trump's rhetoric and the level of threats she receives. "When you have the president using dehumanizing language every single day, we know that message gets to the worst humans possible in this country and that they then take action," she said before adding:

"We've had people incarcerated for threatening to kill me. We have people that are being prosecuted right now for threatening to kill me and so it is something that does stay in the back of our minds."

Originally published on Latin Times