Did Ilhan Omar marry her brother? No evidence backing Mullin’s claim

In September 2026, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said his agency was investigating claims that Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota married her brother to commit immigration fraud. 

In the past, U.S. President Donald Trump and other Republicans have also amplified the claim, which has circulated since 2016. 

Mullin said in a video interview (archived), “We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States” and that federal officials were investigating alleged “illegal activity.”

Snopes has previously reported on this claim about Omar marrying her brother and concluded it was unfounded, meaning there’s no credible evidence supporting it. In 2016, Omar became the first Somali American elected to the Minnesota state House of Representatives. As a young immigrant with progressive politics, Omar has been targeted by numerous unfounded rumors about her religion and family. 

Snopes sent a list of questions to Omar’s spokesperson at the time we first investigated this claim but did not receive responses. 

As we previously reported, the origins of the rumor surrounding Omar’s relationship with her brother are unclear. The claim first appeared on an online Somali community discussion forum called SomaliSpot and was then picked up by Powerline, a conservative blog. An August 2016 blog post stated: 

A reader has written us to point out that the Somali website Somalispot posted information suggesting Omar’s involvement in marriage and immigration fraud. The post notes that Omar married Ahmed Hirsi in 2002. Hirsi is the father of Omar’s three children. Omar is depicted with Hirsi and their children on Omar’s campaign website here.

The post further notes that Omar married her brother Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009, implying that the latter marriage assisted his entry into the United States. Her brother was a British citizen. “As soon as Ilhan Omar married him,” the post continues, “he started university at her [a]lma mater North Dakota State University where he graduated in 2012. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Minneapolis where he was living in a public housing complex and was later evicted. He then returned to the United Kingdom where he now lives.”

Snopes sent questions to Powerline blogger Scott Johnson in 2019, who did not provide any substantive evidence supporting the claim.

Omar denied the rumor in a 2016 statement, calling that marriage “a difficult part of my personal history that I did not consider relevant in the context of a political campaign.” Her full statement can be found below:

In 2002, when I was 19 years old, Ahmed Hirsi (whose name before he received citizenship was Ahmed Aden), the father of my children and love of my life, and I, applied for a marriage license, but we never finalized the application and thus were never legally married. In 2008, we decided to end our relationship in our faith tradition after reaching an impasse in our life together.

I entered into a relationship with a British citizen, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, and married him legally in 2009. Our relationship ended in 2011 and we divorced in our faith tradition. After that, he moved home to England. I have yet to legally divorce Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, but am in the process of doing so. Insinuations that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is my brother are absurd and offensive.

Since 2011, I am happy to say that I have reconciled with Ahmed Hirsi, we have married in our faith tradition and are raising our family together. Like all families, we have had our ups and downs but we are proud to have come through it together.

In 2002, Omar and Hirsi reportedly applied for a marriage license. The couple married in an Islamic ceremony but never completed the process for a civil marriage, according to Hirsi. By 2008, Hirsi and Omar had separated (per Islamic custom). After that relationship ended, Omar had a civil marriage with Elmi in 2009. When that relationship ended, Elmi moved to England and they divorced per Islamic practice in 2011, but without receiving a legal divorce. 

Omar later reconciled with Hirsi and remarried in an Islamic ceremony. In 2017, Omar formally petitioned for divorce from Elmi, and legally wed Hirsi in 2018. Hirsi and Omar legally divorced in 2019.

Snopes found no credible evidence that Elmi and Omar were siblings in a fraudulent marriage. 

According to Omar, she and her family fled the Somalian civil war in 1991. They moved to the U.S. in 1995 after residing for four years in a Kenyan refugee camp. Omar’s mother had died, so her father and grandfather raised her and her siblings. In 2018, Omar showed a reporter from the Minneapolis Star Tribune photos of documents from her family’s entry into the U.S. after fleeing the civil war. She did not provide the reporter with copies of these papers but showed that they listed her father and showed her as the youngest of seven children. There was no one named Ahmed Nur Said Elmi listed in the documents.

We previously noted that Omar and her siblings all arrived in U.S. with refugee statuses. Omar was a minor when she became a naturalized U.S. citizen. How one sibling could end up with a completely different immigration status from the others remains unexplained by the claims. 

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services policy, immigrants can apply for permanent residency status (opening the pathway to naturalization) if they are siblings of a U.S. citizen, or if they are married to a U.S. citizen. Any sibling of Omar’s would not have to marry her in order to secure a path to citizenship. 

Additionally, if Elmi desperately wanted U.S. citizenship, he would not have immediately returned to England after his split with Omar. 

Snopes has covered numerous claims about Omar, including the rumor that her father participated in war crimes or genocide, and the false claim that Omar said al-Qaida made her “proud.” 

Snopes’ archives contributed to this report.

Sources