Did Barbra Streisand, British politician Nigel Farage and Kevin Costner each say "Our country would be safer without Somali immigrants -- starting with Ilhan Omar!"? No, that's not true: Nearly identical stories featuring those and other famous people were published by a network of foreign websites and Facebook pages. There were no news articles about such an event and the stories contained verifiable false details, not to mention the inexplicable element of Farage, a Briton, saying his country would be safer without Omar, a congressperson from Minnesota.
The Streisand version of the fake story appeared in a Jan. 3, 2026 Facebook post (archived here) on the "lustreredj28" account under the title "BREAKING NEWS". It opened:
Barbra Streisand says "Our country would be safer without Somali immigrants -- starting with Ilhan Omar!"
This is what the Streisand version looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Facebook post on the lustreredj28 account.)
The Facebook page "Jean Red on Instagram" (archived here) which was used to promote the story, had a page transparency tab indicating it was run from Vietnam:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of the page transparency tab of the lustreredj28 page on Facebook.)
The Vietnam connection is significant, since fact-checkers, including Lead Stories, have identified a major source of AI-generated false stories coming from a single operation based in that Southeast Asian country. You can see recent reporting and fact checks mentioning that country here.
Lead Stories searched the Google News index of thousands of news sites for news articles that included the key phrases "Our country would be safer without Somali immigrants" and "starting with Ilhan Omar!". No such news reports were found (search archived here).
The Facebook post linked to a "The New Times" website story (archived here) that included following passage:
According to accounts that began spreading late Tuesday evening, Streisand allegedly stated that "our country would be safer without Somali immigrants," adding the particularly incendiary phrase "starting with Ilhan Omar."
A search for "our country would be safer without Somali immigrants," on Streisand's Facebook page did not return any results (archived here).
A search on Facebook for the phrase "Our country would be safer without Somali immigrants - starting with Ilhan Omar" (archived here) brought up dozens of results with almost exactly the same story but about different celebrities and politicians, accompanied by images pairing Omar with each famous person.
That Lead Stories search found posts naming:
- Broadcaster and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro;
- British actress Joanna Lumley
- Rock star Kid Rock;
- Rap star 50 Cent;
- Country star Jason Aldean;
- U.S. Senator John Kennedy;
- Country star Gretchen Wilson;
- Rock star Bob Seger;
- House Speaker Mike Johnson;
- Fox News contributor Johnny Joey Jones.
- Country star and movie actor Dwight Yoakam
- Rock star Steven Tyler
Shown below in a scrolling GIF are the results:
(Image source: Lead Stories animation of Facebook search results for the phrase "Our country would be safer without Somali immigrants - starting with Ilhan Omar".)
Lead Stories has published a primer -- or a prebunk -- on how to identify these kinds of fake posts exported from Vietnam. It's titled "Prebunk: Beware Of Fake Fan Pages Spreading False Stories About Your Favorite Celebrities -- How To Spot 'Viet Spam'"
