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Oh, brother!
Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s marriage to her alleged brother won’t get her kicked out of the US, but other matters in her immigration file might, sources told The Post.
In 2009, Omar wed self-described ‘dirty dandy’ Ahmed Elmi, a UK national long rumored to be her brother. But the federal probe into Somalia-born Omar’s past is more likely to focus on how she became as US citizen as a teenager and paperwork filed by her father.
The father, Nur Said Mohamed Elmi was long identified as an “educator” before his death in 2020, at which point his military record emerged.
“If there’s enough evidence that she or [her father] lied on her immigration application to become a United States citizen, whether it was one time or several times, the Trump administration could initiate a denaturalization process that would strip her of her citizenship,” a top immigration official told The Post.
Prosecutions related to her marriage to Ahmed Elmi — long rumored to be a “Green Card marriage” so he could stay in the country, but which ended in divorced in 2017 — are a dead end for several reasons, a former ICE lawyer told The Post.
A US citizen who participates in a sham marriage couldn’t be deported. If proven, Omar’s alleged brother would be banned from entering the US again, but Omar couldn’t be kicked out on that alone, the lawyer said.
Marriage fraud is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, Omar would dodge criminal charges because there is a five-year statute of limitations which expired upon divorce, the lawyer said. Incest charges would only be brought with evidence of sexual contact, per Minnesota state law.
Still, Omar could easily put that topic to rest if she were truly innocent, a former executive-level federal official told The Post.
“A DNA test would absolutely resolve the question one way or another. But there’s no legal obligation for [Elmi] to cooperate from another country,” the source said.
That official nonetheless predicted, “The request will be made for DNA testing and it will be refused loudly and publicly,” and “[Omar] will pout and scream and say it’s offensive and a witch hunt.”
All three sources spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the politically-charged nature of the case. Elmi and Omar did not respond to requests for comment from The Post.
Trump officials in recent days teased the far-left congresswoman’s mysterious origin story is under examination, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stating on a podcast “something’s going to happen” as investigators look into the broader family migration history regarding Omar.
Sources who spoke to The Post said the investigation is most likely looking at three areas pertaining to Omar’s naturalization.
Omar claims she received automatic US citizenship, granted to minor-age children of naturalized parents—in this case her father, Nur Said, who fled to the US in 1995 from war-torn Somalia. Omar, her father and siblings became citizens in 2000.
If Omar was actually older than 17 at the time—as some believe—then her citizenship could be revoked.
In 2019, a social media video argued Omar was 18 or 19 (not 17) in 2000 when she said she became naturalized—which would have made her too old for naturalization via a parental path, which would constitute fraud.
Two days after that video went viral, Omar’s official birth year on the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library’s website was revised from 1981 to 1982, according to accusations made by former Minnesota congressional candidate AJ Kern, who pointed to archived versions of the site which revealed the change.
Congressional records today report Omar was born in October 1982, making her 17 at the time of naturalization.
Omar has never publicly produced a birth certificate, claiming all such paperwork went up in smoke during the unrest in her native country.
The former top immigration official added that if Omar’s father lied on any of his citizenship paperwork, and Omar went along with it, she could be stripped of citizenship.
“If she misrepresented herself, that would wipe her out from naturalization,” the former official said.
The source added that in such a scenario her current marriage, her fourth, to former campaign staffer (and US-born citizen) Tim Mynett would not shield her from a deportation order.
Nur Said is documented as a Somali National Army colonel who trained in the Soviet Union and led a regiment in the 1977–78 Ogaden War against Ethiopia, according to Somali-language reports.
His family lived a relatively privileged Mogadishu life under dictator Siad Barre until the regime collapsed and civil war erupted in 1991 and they fled.
Shortly before Nur Said’s death, a former Somali Prime Minister tweeted his respects and identified him as a colonel.
The immigration lawyer told The Post if her father misrepresented his role in Barre’s government and Omar knowingly validated the lie, that could jeopardize her citizenship.
The lawyer also said because Omar was born before 1983, she’s subject to a law that both parents must be naturalized US citizens in order for their children to get citizenship, unless the other parent is deceased.
Omar has long claimed her mother, Fadhuma Abukar Haji Hussein, died when she was two years old and her dad raised seven kids solo. The identities of five of Omar’s six siblings also remain entirely unknown.
The paperwork currently under federal scrutiny is littered with traps officials could use to denaturalize, the lawyer said.
Meanwhile, The Post tracked Ahmed Elmi to South Africa, where he surfaced last November as a visiting scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
By January, he was back in the UK with a gig at the University of Bristol’s School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, where he “leads and delivers undergraduate seminars on political theory, with a focus on contemporary global politics,” according to his university profile.
He’s also resumed his British taxpayer funded PhD research into the topic of “queerphobia in Kenya” and in the Spring launched a Substack blog on the niche topic.
Controversy has long surrounded his marriage to Omar. While legally married to Elmi, Omar had her third child with her first husband, Ahmed Hirsi.
Accusations that Elmi was, in fact, Omar’s brother first emerged from Minnesota’s Somali community itself. Local bloggers alleged the mysterious, effeminate Elmi blew into town in the late 2000s and that the future congresswoman introduced him as her brother from London saying he needed “papers,” referring to immigration documents. Documents reviewed by The Post show the three shared a residence at one point.
Omar was married to Hirsi but only by a non-legally binding Muslim ceremony in 2002, which was not recognized by the state. The following year, their first child, Isra, was born. Their second child, son Adnan, was born in 2005.
A Hennepin County, Minn., marriage certificate reviewed by The Post shows Omar and Elmi then married on February 12, 2009, in Eden Prairie, Minn.
That wedding — held by a Christian minister, despite Omar being Muslim — was legally recognized under US law. After the 2017 divorce, Omar then legally married Hirsi before divorcing him for staffer Mynett.
English (US)