Representative Ilhan Omar’s complicated family history has become central to a federal criminal investigation after Homeland Security agents searched her Washington, D.C., home last week.
The inquiry is examining the records of her late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, and whether he provided false or incomplete information on immigration documents, according to The New York Times.
Omar has said she became a U.S. citizen in 2000, at age 17, through her father—a pathway unavailable to anyone 18 or older. In May 2019, her staff changed her birth year on her Minnesota Legislature biography from 1981 to 1982, The New York Post reported.
During the October 12 search of the Northeast Washington home she shares with her husband, Tim Mynett, agents seized Omar’s phone and passport. Grand jury subpoenas were also issued to her sister, Sahra Noor, and at least one other person in her family circle.
It is not the first time the Trump administration has examined Omar’s immigration history. Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of ICE, reviewed her case in 2019 but found “insufficient evidence of wrongdoing,” a former official told The Washington Post.
The latest investigation has also brought renewed attention to claims surrounding Omar’s 2009 marriage to British citizen Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said on a podcast in September, “We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States.” No evidence supporting that allegation has been made public.
Omar denies any wrongdoing and has not been charged. She has described the allegation about her marriage as “absurd and offensive” and characterized the raid as an effort to target political opponents.
Here Our News Outlet examines Omar’s complicated family history—from the “colonel” father at the center of the investigation to the husband accused, without publicly released evidence, of being her brother and the political consultant she married in 2020.
THE ‘COLONEL’ FATHER
Omar’s father, Nur Omar Mohamed, center, attended her swearing-in ceremony with Speaker Nancy Pelosi in January 2019
Nur Omar Mohamed brought his family to the United States in 1995 after four years in a refugee camp in Kenya. They initially settled in the Washington suburbs before moving to Minneapolis
Nur Omar Mohamed moved his family to the United States in 1995 after they had spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya. The family first lived in the Washington suburbs and later settled in Minneapolis.
He worked as a taxi driver before joining the U.S. Postal Service, while Omar has also referred to him as an educator.
“Ilhan’s father was never an educator,” Somali historian Mohamed Haji Ingiriis told The New York Post, describing him instead as “a full colonel in Siad Barre’s military regime.”
Ingiriis has alleged that Nur “misrepresented himself as a refugee” to U.S. authorities, arguing that he remained loyal to the dictatorship until its collapse in 1991.
Nur’s immigration records are now a key focus of the federal investigation because Omar has said that she gained her citizenship through his naturalization.
Nur died in June 2020 at age 67 from complications related to Covid-19. “No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew and loved him,” Omar wrote at the time.
Omar’s mother, Fadhuma Abukar Haji Hussein, died when Ilhan was two years old. Her father and grandfather subsequently raised her as the youngest of seven children. Omar has rarely spoken publicly about her other siblings.
THE SECOND HUSBAND AND ALLEGED BROTHER
Omar married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, right, a British citizen, in February 2009, when records listed their ages as 26 and 23
Elmi, right, pictured with Omar, second from left, has since returned to London, Our News Outlet has reported, and has not responded to previous requests for comment
Omar married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen, in February 2009. At the time, records listed their ages as 26 and 23.
The couple filed their marriage license application in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and despite both being Muslim, their ceremony was conducted by a Christian minister, Wilecia Harris.
‘If they had gone to an imam he would have almost certainly have known if they were related,’ one Somali leader in Minnesota told Our News Outlet.
Abdihakim Osman Nur, a Minneapolis community leader, told Our News Outlet in 2020 that Omar and Ahmed Hirsi, the father of her children, had introduced Elmi to him as her brother.
‘She said she needed to get papers for her brother to go to school,’ Nur said. ‘We all thought she was just getting papers together to allow him to stay in this country.’
Elmi enrolled at North Dakota State University, Omar’s alma mater, in 2010, and university officials told Our News Outlet he was still there in 2012, a year after Omar says they split.
The couple divorced in 2017. Omar has called the suggestion that Elmi is her brother ‘absurd and offensive,’ and her 2020 memoir described him as a man ‘whom I spent so little time with that I wouldn’t even make him a footnote in my story.’
Elmi has since returned to London, Our News Outlet has reported, and has not responded to past requests for comment.
THE BABY DADDY (AKA ‘SOUTHSIDE’)
Ahmed Hirsi, known as ‘Southside’, is the father of Omar’s three children. They wed in a 2002 religious ceremony, but it was not a legal marriage
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Omar celebrates with her husband Ahmed Hirsi, daughter Ilwad and son Adnan on November 6, 2018
Ahmed Hirsi, known as ‘Southside’, is the father of Omar’s three children. They wed in a 2002 religious ceremony, but it was not a legal marriage.
The pair split in 2008, but Omar says they reconciled in 2011 while she was still legally married to Elmi, and their third child followed a year later.
She filed joint federal tax returns with Hirsi in 2014 and 2015 while still legally married to Elmi, according to a 2019 report by Minnesota’s Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board.
Omar and Hirsi finally married legally in January 2018, a month after her divorce from Elmi, but the marriage lasted less than two years.
The marriage effectively ended when Hirsi visited Omar’s Washington apartment and found her lounging around in pajamas with Tim Mynett, Our News Outlet reported.
They divorced in November 2019, and Hirsi remarried in Mogadishu just 37 days later.
THE MILLIONAIRE CURRENT HUSBAND
Ilhan Omar and her husband Tim Mynett at a White House garden party
Tim Mynett, a Democratic political consultant who converted to Islam, married Omar in March 2020.
Our News Outlet revealed their relationship in 2019, after the pair were spotted dining at an Italian restaurant in Playa Del Rey, California, while both were married to other people.
His then-wife, Beth Mynett, filed for divorce that August, citing his ‘devastating and shocking declaration of love’ for Omar.
Omar’s campaign went on to pay his firm, E Street Group, more than $2.8 million over the 2019-20 election cycle, federal filings show.
Mynett later co-founded venture capital firm Rose Lake Capital. Omar’s original disclosure covering 2024 valued his stake at between $5 million and $25 million, compared with $1-$1,000 the previous year.
The reported value of his stake in winery eStCru rose from between $15,000 and $50,000 to between $1 million and $5 million over the same period.
Omar later amended the filing to give both interests no net value, with her office blaming an accounting error involving ownership shares and liabilities.
Omar’s office said in September that the Office of Congressional Conduct had voted to dismiss misconduct allegations over the filings. Pirro’s office is conducting a separate criminal investigation into the valuations.
Mynett defended his wife outside their home last week, telling Fox News: ‘My wife came here when she was 12 years old as a child war refugee.’
THE AUTHOR SISTER
Omar and her older sister Sahra Noor
Sahra Noor, Omar’s older sister, was among those who received grand jury subpoenas last week, the New York Times reported.
Noor, who holds degrees in nursing and health systems administration, now runs a consulting firm that says it has secured ‘more than $20 million in funding for health initiatives.’
Her memoir, Salt in the Snow, came out in August and explores migration, belonging and the influence of her father.
Receiving a grand jury subpoena does not mean Noor is suspected of a crime, and she has not been charged.
THE CHILDREN
Amal Sabrie, Isra Hirsi, Ilhan Omar, Ilwad Hirsi, Ahmed Hirsi and Adnan Hirsi attend the premiere of Time For Ilhan in 2018 in New York City
Ahmed Hirsi (left), Ilhan Omar’s ex-husband, with their son Adnan
Adnan Hirsi, 20, is Omar’s only son. Minneapolis police searched the apartment he shares with Abdulrahman Abdi, 22, on August 25, seizing guns and ammunition belonging to Abdi, Fox News reported.
Abdi, a convicted felon, faces a weapons charge, but Adnan is not accused of any wrongdoing.
Omar, who supports red flag laws and has voted for an assault weapons ban, did not answer a reporter’s questions on Capitol Hill in September after police searched her son’s apartment.
Isra Hirsi, 23, is the eldest and co-founded the US Youth Climate Strike as a teenager, landing on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list in 2020. Ilwad, the youngest, was born in 2012.
