A federal investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar's immigration history is focused less on whether she married her brother and more on how she became a U.S. citizen, raising the prospect of a denaturalization fight that could strip her of citizenship altogether.
Immigration officials who spoke to the New York Post said the Trump administration's inquiry most likely centers on paperwork filed by Omar's father, Nur Said Mohamed Elmi, when the family sought citizenship, not on her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Elmi, the man long rumored to be her brother. Three sources with direct knowledge of immigration enforcement laid out why: the marriage fraud angle is legally dead, but the naturalization angle could still carry consequences.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed the probe's existence in broad terms on a podcast, saying investigators are examining Omar's "broader family migration history" and that "something's going to happen." He did not specify charges or a timeline.
Omar married Ahmed Elmi on February 12, 2009, in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, according to a Hennepin County marriage certificate reviewed by the Post. They divorced in 2017. Marriage fraud is a federal felony carrying up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but it comes with a five-year statute of limitations.
A former ICE lawyer told the Post that the clock ran out when the divorce was finalized in 2017. That door is shut.
Minnesota state incest charges would require evidence of sexual contact, a bar investigators have not publicly claimed to meet. So the marriage itself, whatever its purpose, is unlikely to produce criminal liability at this point.
That leaves the naturalization paperwork.
Omar's father, Nur Said Mohamed Elmi, fled Somalia for the United States in 1995 after the collapse of the Siad Barre regime. He became a naturalized citizen in 2000, and Omar, then a minor, received citizenship automatically under a law granting it to children under 18 whose parents naturalize.
But that law contains a wrinkle for children born before 1983. Under the applicable statute, both parents must have been naturalized citizens for the child to receive citizenship, unless one parent was deceased. Omar has said her mother, Fadhuma Abukar Haji Hussein, died when Omar was two years old. If that claim appeared on her father's application, and if it was false, the entire basis for Omar's citizenship could unravel.
A top immigration official put it plainly:
"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 former top immigration official echoed the point: "If she misrepresented herself, that would wipe her out from naturalization."
Nur Said died in 2020. Shortly before his death, a former Somali prime minister tweeted respects and identified him as a colonel, a detail that contradicted Omar's long-standing description of her father as an "educator." Somali-language reports subsequently documented his service in the Somali National Army, including command of a regiment during the 1977, 78 Ogaden War against Ethiopia, and military training in the Soviet Union. Whether any of that history was disclosed or concealed on immigration paperwork is among the questions federal investigators appear to be examining.
The naturalization timeline depends on Omar's age in 2000. She has claimed she was 17 at the time, making her a minor eligible for automatic citizenship through her father. Congressional records list her birth as October 1982.
But former Minnesota congressional candidate AJ Kern pointed to archived versions of the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library's website showing Omar's birth year was originally listed as 1981, then revised to 1982 two days after a 2019 social media video argued Omar was actually 18 or 19 at the time of her naturalization. If Omar was born in 1981, she would have turned 18 or 19 by 2000 and would not have qualified for automatic citizenship as a minor child.
Omar has never publicly produced a birth certificate. She did not respond to the Post's request for comment.
Ahmed Elmi, the man at the center of the brother allegation, has not cooperated with investigators and is under no legal obligation to do so from abroad. He surfaced last November as a visiting scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. By January he had returned to the United Kingdom, where he is affiliated with the University of Bristol's School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies. His university profile says he leads undergraduate seminars on political theory. This spring, he launched a Substack blog focused on "queerphobia in Kenya," where he is conducting British taxpayer-funded PhD research.
A former executive-level federal official told the Post that a DNA test would resolve the sibling question definitively, but predicted it will never happen.
"The request will be made for DNA testing and it will be refused loudly and publicly."
The same official predicted Omar's response: she "will pout and scream and say it's offensive and a witch hunt."
Elmi did not respond to the Post's request for comment either.
Omar's personal history complicates the picture further. She married Ahmed Hirsi in a non-legally binding Muslim ceremony in 2002. Their first child, Isra, was born in 2003. A son, Adnan, followed in 2005. Omar then married Ahmed Elmi in 2009 while her relationship with Hirsi continued, she had a third child with Hirsi during the Elmi marriage.
After divorcing Elmi in 2017, Omar legally married Hirsi. She later divorced Hirsi and married Tim Mynett, a former campaign staffer who is her current husband. Mynett is a U.S.-born citizen, but officials told the Post that his citizenship would not shield Omar from a deportation order if denaturalization proceedings succeeded.
Documents reviewed by the Post show Omar, Elmi, and Hirsi shared a residence at one point, a detail that raises questions about the nature of the Elmi marriage but does not, by itself, prove fraud.
Local Somali community bloggers in Minnesota have long alleged that Omar introduced Elmi as her brother from London when he arrived in the state in the late 2000s. The identities of five of Omar's six siblings remain, as the Post noted, "entirely unknown" in the public record.
No formal denaturalization proceeding has been filed against Omar as of the Post's reporting. No criminal charges have been announced. The investigation, as described by the three anonymous sources, remains in its early stages.
But the legal framework is clear. If federal investigators can establish that Omar or her father made material misrepresentations on the immigration paperwork that led to her 2000 citizenship, about her mother's death, her father's background, her own age, or the composition of the family, the government has a viable path to strip that citizenship. Denaturalization does not require a criminal conviction. It requires proof of fraud.
Omar has served in Congress since 2019. She represents a Minnesota district. She has built a national profile as one of the most prominent progressive voices in the House. None of that insulates her from a process that, by design, asks one question: did you tell the truth when you asked this country to let you in?
Citizenship earned honestly is sacred. Citizenship obtained through fraud is a lie the government has every right, and every obligation, to correct.
