Questions are mounting over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s name and immigration history.
A 2009 Minnesota marriage-license application obtained by The Post appears to show that Omar initially listed her surname as “Omar” before changing it to “Elmi,” the last name of Ahmed Elmi, whom she has been accused of marrying while knowing him to be her brother.
A certified copy from Hennepin County shows “Omar” crossed out and replaced with “Elmi.” A subsequent edit changed the surname back to “Omar.”
The alterations could prove relevant to a Justice Department investigation into whether Omar fraudulently obtained US citizenship in 2000 by failing to use her legal name and providing an incorrect birthdate.
The investigation follows years of allegations that the Somalia-born lawmaker committed immigration fraud by marrying Elmi, a British citizen who has described himself as gay.
In a court filing last week, the Justice Department referred to Omar as “Congresswoman Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar.”
A source familiar with the investigation previously told The Post that Omar may not be the congresswoman’s “real” surname, suggesting she was born with the last name Elmi, like the man she allegedly married.
The marriage-license application, dated Feb. 12, 2009, could be an important piece of evidence, although it does not by itself establish wrongdoing.
Omar’s office did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment about the document.
It remains unclear who completed the application, though the entries appear to be written in a single hand.
Unlike the Justice Department’s recent reference to Omar’s alleged legal name, the first change on the application reads “Ilhan Omar Elmi.”
An image of the application has circulated online for years. It appears to have been first published in August 2016 by Minnesota-based Alpha News, but major news organizations have paid little attention to it until now.
Scott W. Johnson, a retired Minneapolis attorney who has spent a decade examining allegations surrounding Omar’s immigration history, told The Post that “the whole thing is a red flag.”
“Questions should be asked. She’s never answered them,” said Johnson, who previously served on Alpha News’ board.
“The whole thing was a joke. The marriage was a fraudulent marriage, brazenly fraudulent,” he said. “They didn’t take it seriously. It was entered into for a fraudulent purpose.”
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AJ Kern, a former Minnesota congressional candidate who has investigated Omar’s immigration records and conflicting birthdate information, said the questions surrounding the lawmaker continue to grow.
“I think it’s pretty clear she married her brother and committed immigration fraud,” Kern told The Post.
Kern said the broader concern was whether a noncitizen had been permitted to serve in Congress.
“If the evidence seems to be pointing to the fact that she never obtained citizenship, Congress is failing to do their job. If we’ve had a foreign nationalist occupying a seat in Congress, that’s a problem,” Kern said.
Omar has broadly rejected the accusations as a racist conspiracy theory and politically motivated smear. However, when MS NOW anchor Chris Hayes asked her last week whether she had married her brother, she responded, “Not to my knowledge.”
President Trump has repeatedly criticized Omar in public remarks, calling her a “complainer” who is eager to attack the US government. On Friday afternoon in the Oval Office, he also said that “Omar” is not her real name.
Federal officials raided Omar’s home on Oct. 12.
The Justice Department opened an investigation in 2016, during Barack Obama’s presidency, into whether Omar illegally married her brother to help him obtain a green card. At the time, she was campaigning for a seat in the Minnesota legislature.
The Biden administration closed the investigation in 2021, two years after Omar entered Congress, after concluding that the alleged offense fell outside the five-year statute of limitations. Prosecutors would have needed to bring charges by 2014. The FBI also could not interview Elmi because he had returned to the United Kingdom.
Omar has been married three times. She took part in an Islamic marriage ceremony with Ahmed Hirsi in 2002 and had two children with him. She legally married Elmi in 2009, and their divorce was finalized in 2017. Omar had a third child with Hirsi in June 2012, then legally married him in 2018 before filing for divorce roughly a year later. She married her current husband, Tim Mynett, in 2020.
Questions have also been raised about Omar’s year of birth.
Omar has said she became a US citizen at 17 after her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, was naturalized.
Some records list her birthdate as Oct. 4, 1981, while others identify the year as 1982. If the 1981 date is correct, Omar would have been an adult when her father became a citizen and may not have qualified for citizenship automatically as a minor.
Authorities are also examining whether Mohamed obtained citizenship improperly.
Even if Omar unlawfully obtained citizenship, criminal charges may be barred by the statute of limitations. Civil denaturalization, however, has no such time limit and could result in her deportation.
