Rep. Ilhan Omar did, in fact, marry her brother. This is not a rumor but a documented fact.
Ahmed Nur Said Elmi came to the US from London in 2002. He was living as an openly gay man and his Islamic family did not support his lifestyle. A journalist at Free Beacon ran Ilhan Omar’s name through the Minnesota Official Marriage System and found two marriage certificates. One was to her public husband, Ahmed Aden, who later changed his name to Ahmed Hirsi. They applied for a marriage license in 2002, but never legalized the marriage. There is a second certificate dated 2009 for Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Despite being a devout Muslim, her marriage certificate was signed by Christian pastor Wilecia Harris.
Omar’s campaign and lawyers insist she is married to Ahmed Ade,n but there is no official court documentation to show that the couple ever wed. They say that he is the biological father of her three children. However, voter registration records do show Hirsi and Omar living at the same address. Omar and Hirsi filed joint tax returns in 2014 and 2015 despite not being legally married. The paperwork shows that, under US law, her legal husband is Ahmed Nur Said Elmi—her biological brother.
“Like a lot of families, she and Hirsi, the father of their three children, have had ups and downs, have weathered some storms, but what matters is that they came out of it together,” [campaign spokesman Ben] Goldfarb said. He declined to offer more details.
Omar’s campaign has deemed any questioning [Donald] Trump-style misogyny, racism, anti-immigration rhetoric and Islamophobic division.”
Omar first came to the US in 1995 under hazy circumstances. Historian Dominic Green closely reviewed her story and memoir to learn more. Green concluded:
“The persistent and credibly sourced claim that Omar committed immigration and education fraud with one Ahmed Said Elmi who, it is also claimed, may be her brother, is simply ignored. She doesn’t even name Elmi, and calls the man that she was married to for [eight] years someone ‘whom I spent little time with that I wouldn’t even make him a footnote in my story if it weren’t for the fact that this event turned into the main headline later on’. In fact, address records show that Omar was living with her first husband (‘Islamically married’) while still married to her second (civil marriage). In 2017, when she filed for divorce from her second husband, she claimed under penalty of perjury not to have been in contact with her first husband since 2011. Dozens of now-deleted social-media posts, photos and a 2016 interview suggest that she may have lied.”
The Minnesota House of Representatives’ own website paints a murky story dated October 7, 2019: “On Friday, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar filed for divorce from her husband, Ahmed Hirsi. In 2017, Rep. Omar filed for divorce from her first husband, Ahmed Elmi. In 2018, Rep. Omar legally married Ahmed Hirsi. Now in 2019, Rep. Omar is filing for divorce from Mr. Hirsi. Representative Steve Drazkowski reacted to the most recent news, saying, “This is the most recent development in an attempt by Rep. Omar to subvert the truth regarding her multiple violations of the law which include perjury and tax fraud.”” Then there are claims that Rep. Omar paid her boyfriend Tim Mynett $250,000 from her public campaign account.
Omar once admitted marriage to Elmi but said he was not her brother. She refuses to provide any documentation to prove otherwise. She claims that she cannot produce a birth certificate for herself or Elmi due to the civil war in Somalia. Elmi was granted citizenship through his marriage to Omar—that much is clear. Her own immigration story may be ingenuine, but the fraud is rampant.
The chronology of all this, briefly, follows:
- 1982 — Born in Somalia;
- 1991 — Went to refugee camp in Kenya;
- 1995 — Came to United States as a refugee, becoming a citizen at some later point;
- 2002 — Took out a marriage license to marry Ahmed Hirsi (AKA Ahmed Aden), but did not marry him except in a Muslim ceremony; they had two kids;
- 2008 — Parted from Hirsi; a Muslim divorce, not recorded, took place;
- 2009 — Married Ahmed Elmi; a marriage certificate exists;
- 2011 — Parted from Elmi, with a Muslim divorce;
- 2012 — Reunited with Hirsi and had a third child;
- 2017 — Formally divorced Elmi (after being elected to the legislature);
- 2018 — Married (re-married?) Hirsi and was nominated for Congress.
Omar may not have been intimate with her brother but she did marry him to bypass US immigration laws. This is illegal and grounds for revocation of naturalization. Marriage fraud is a federal crime under (8 U.S.C. § 1325(c)) and punishable by five year in prison and/or a $250,000 fine. Omar repeatedly flaunts her allegiance to Somalia, states openly that she represents the interests of a foreign nation, and has manipulated US law to her benefit. She does not represent US interests and has violated US law on numerous accounts. So yes—Omar did technically marry her brother.