The Department of Justice is investigating Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) over potential immigration fraud, Vice President JD Vance announced during a White House press briefing on Tuesday.
The investigation revives long-standing questions regarding Omar’s past marital history and immigration status. While the allegations have resurfaced repeatedly since her initial 2018 congressional campaign, Vance’s announcement marks an official acknowledgment of federal scrutiny into the matter.
“I don’t want to prejudge an investigation,” Vance told reporters at the White House. “It certainly seems like something fishy is there, but everybody’s entitled to equal justice under the law.”
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Vance, who heads the administration’s task force on benefit fraud, previously stated earlier this year that Omar “definitely committed immigration fraud.” On Tuesday, he emphasized that the administration would follow the standard legal process. “So we’re going to investigate it. We’re going to take a look at it. If we think that there’s a crime, we’re going to prosecute that crime, and that’s something the Department of Justice is looking at right now,” Vance said.
In response to the announcement, Omar’s chief of staff, Connor McNutt, dismissed the allegations, calling the claim “a ridiculous lie.”
The focus of the scrutiny stems from Omar’s second marriage. In February 2009, she married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a UK citizen, in a Christian ceremony in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Reports over the last decade have frequently raised questions about whether Elmi is actually Omar’s brother. The couple legally divorced in December 2017 without having any children. Omar has rarely commented publicly on the marriage, describing it as a brief relationship where the two lived apart for most of the duration, except for a period between 2009 and 2011.
Omar’s broader marital timeline has also drawn public attention. She originally wed her first husband, Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi, in an Islamic ceremony in 2002. The couple had three children together but did not legally marry under state law until January 2018.
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Public speculation regarding her marriage to Elmi began on an online forum called SomaliSpot, where posts alleging a sibling relationship were later deleted. Furthermore, a deleted Instagram photo published by the Minneapolis Star Tribune previously showed Elmi holding Omar’s third child with a caption referencing “nieces.”
In 2020, Abdihakim Osman, a Minneapolis-based Somali blogger who knew Omar during her youth, stated that Omar had introduced Elmi to community members as her brother from London in the late 2000s, adding that she noted at the time that he was looking for immigration paperwork.
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