Federal prosecutors plan to use DNA evidence that could prove Rep. Ilhan Omar wed her brother for immigration benefits, sources say, after agents searched her D.C. home.
People familiar with a years-long criminal probe say federal prosecutors are preparing DNA results as a key piece of proof that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) committed immigration fraud. The allegation at the center of that effort is that she married her brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, in 2009 to help him secure a green card that never came through.
The Post reported that Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a search warrant at Omar’s Washington, D.C., bungalow on Oct. 12 and left carrying boxes marked “Seized Property Evidence.” Sources say the DNA, whistleblowers, and government records now give prosecutors a solid basis to take conspiracy charges tied to immigration fraud before a grand jury.
Omar has denied the sibling-marriage claim since she first ran for office in 2016. Her lawyers call the entire investigation political payback. The facts on the ground keep expanding anyway.
The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office opened the probe. On Oct. 12, HSI agents searched Omar’s D.C. home under a warrant signed by a magistrate judge. Cellphone and passport were among the items taken. Defense counsel later demanded their immediate return.
DC U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, whose office is also examining Omar’s House financial disclosures, underscored the legal threshold the warrant had to clear.
Pirro said:
"That judge would not have signed that warrant unless there was probable cause."
She added that if a crime was committed, it will be prosecuted. Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani said a search of this kind would not have moved forward unless it came from the highest levels of the Justice Department and prosecutors believed they could indict.
Related reporting has already detailed how agents seized Omar’s cellphone during that same D.C. raid, putting the digital record alongside the physical evidence now in federal hands.
Breitbart reported that investigators collected garbage from Omar’s Washington home while searching for her DNA. Multiple sources familiar with the probe told NewsNation the potential DNA evidence is critical and that the case runs broader than the longstanding public accusations about her immigration history and marital status. Family members have been pulled in; evidence is expected to go before a grand jury.
One source told The Post the DNA is critical to proving the 2009 marriage to Elmi was a sibling marriage meant to deliver him a green card. Elmi applied for a marriage-based green card in 2019, then withdrew the application after U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services asked for more evidence about the marriage. He now lives in the United Kingdom.
Readers tracking the same investigation have seen how family texts on a sister’s phone helped open the door to the HSI search that produced the seized boxes.
Separate from the marriage claim, sources have long pointed to another alleged misrepresentation: that Omar or her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, misstated her birth date so she could gain citizenship when he naturalized in 2000. Her family left war-torn Somalia in 1995. She has lived in the United States since childhood.
Fox News reported that federal investigators have subpoenaed Omar’s sister Sahra Noor and other relatives over possible fraud and false statements in immigration paperwork. Two sources familiar with the probe said the D.C. home search itself was part of that ongoing criminal investigation. In May 2019, Omar’s congressional staff asked the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library to change her listed birth year from 1981 to 1982.
Omar answered the scrutiny by framing it as political targeting. “I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” she said.
The same thread has produced grand jury subpoenas hitting Omar relatives as prosecutors widen the paper trail beyond the congresswoman alone.
Public records and prior reporting sketch a tangled personal timeline. Omar had a Muslim wedding ceremony with Ahmed Hirsi in 2002. She legally wed Elmi in 2009, separated from him in 2011, and divorced him in 2017. Only after that divorce was the legal marriage to Hirsi entered. She filed joint taxes with Hirsi in 2014 and 2015 while still legally married to Elmi. She later divorced Hirsi in 2019 and married political consultant Tim Mynett. She has three children; the last was born while she was still legally married to Elmi. Documents previously reviewed by The Post indicated that at one point Omar, Hirsi, and Elmi shared a residence.
When asked last week about the seizure of evidence, Mynett replied:
"My wife came here when she was 12 years old as a child war refugee."
That statement does not answer the DNA question prosecutors are now preparing to put in front of a grand jury.
Rahmani laid out why prosecutors may charge conspiracy rather than a narrower immigration count. A conspiracy theory lets them allege overt acts that fall outside the normal statute of limitations. He pointed to two practical reasons.
Rahmani said:
"First, you have an unindicted co-conspirator in her dad, who died.... [Second,] you get some of this older conduct that’s outside the statute of limitations as well."
He also noted:
"If you argue a conspiracy, you can allege overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy that are outside the statute of limitations."
The statute of limitations is longer for providing false information on immigration paperwork than for a fraudulent marriage itself. A civil case carries no statute of limitations at all. Pirro has left open both criminal and civil routes.
President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said over the weekend that federal investigators have built a strong case that could lead the administration to seek Omar’s denaturalization. During the first Trump administration, a former immigration official told The Washington Post, the sibling-marriage allegation was examined and the evidence was judged insufficient at the time. Sources now say the DNA changes that calculus.
The Washington Examiner noted that senior Trump administration officials have indicated authorities are mounting an immigration fraud case, and that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has pointed to actionable evidence supporting the claim Omar married her own brother as part of an immigration scheme. Omar has been a naturalized citizen since 2000.
Omar retained attorneys Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz. They sent the Justice Department a letter citing “grave concerns” and demanding the “immediate return” of all seized property. They argued there is “no legitimate basis for any suggestion that she has violated any law concerning her citizenship status.”
The lawyers wrote:
"President Trump has made no secret of his desire to target Representative Omar for criminal investigation and deportation as retribution for her political advocacy."
A DOJ spokesperson answered that the letter was “riddled with false allegations and inaccuracies,” that attorneys and law-enforcement partners “complied with all court orders and legal obligations, as they always do,” and that “leaking a letter to the press right after sending it is not good faith. It is a publicity play.”
Defense counsel also claimed agents ignored the magistrate judge’s special requests for how the warrant should be executed and flouted longstanding Justice Department policy by conducting the search close to an election. The department rejected that account.
While that fight plays out, Senate leadership has offered little public pushback, a silence already examined in coverage of how Schumer stays silent as feds build the deportation case.
Pirro’s office is also looking at Omar’s House disclosures. Entries in those filings produced an unexplained accounting “discrepancy” that deflated the congresswoman’s reported net worth by tens of millions of dollars in the last year. That track runs alongside the immigration file rather than replacing it.
No charges have been announced. No arrest has been made. What has happened is concrete: a judge found probable cause, agents seized evidence, DNA is in prosecutors’ hands, relatives have been subpoenaed, and officials now describe a case strong enough to support conspiracy charges and, if fraud is proved, a path to denaturalization.
Citizenship is not a costume. When federal prosecutors say they hold DNA that could prove a member of Congress married her brother to game the immigration system, the country is entitled to see the evidence tested in open court, not buried under claims of persecution.
