Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says his department is actively investigating whether Rep. Ilhan Omar married her own brother to fraudulently bring him into the United States, a claim Omar has long dismissed as politically motivated.
Mullin made the announcement during an interview with conservative commentator Benny Johnson at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, stating flatly that DHS has an "ongoing investigation" into the Minnesota Democrat's immigration history. He went further than any cabinet official has before on the matter, claiming the probe extends beyond the marriage question into what he described as broader irregularities in how Omar's family entered the country.
Omar has repeatedly denied the allegations, calling them "lies" and dismissing them as baseless political attacks. Newsweek reported that it reached out to Omar's office for comment Friday afternoon by email. No response was included in the outlet's coverage.
The central allegation, that Omar legally married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen, in 2009 and that Elmi is in fact her biological brother, has circulated in conservative media for years. The couple divorced in 2017. Critics have long argued the marriage was a vehicle to help Elmi gain entry to the United States through family-based immigration channels.
Mullin did not hedge when asked about the matter. He told Johnson:
"We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States."
He also signaled that investigators are looking at a wider pattern. As we previously reported, Mullin has raised the prospect that the entire Omar family's immigration history may be under scrutiny.
"There may be more to this, the whole family migration and possibly some illegal activity for them to come to the United States to begin with."
Mullin framed the investigation as a matter of law, not politics. He said any enforcement action would rest on the evidence alone:
"If we actually move a case forward, it's not a political case. It's an actual case because they did things wrong."
The New York Post reported that Mullin also addressed the legal mechanics, stating that immigration fraud carries no statute of limitations, meaning violations could remain actionable years or even decades after the fact. "If you lied about certain things about your application. There's no expiration to that. If we can prove it, that you shouldn't have been here in the first place, we'll deport you," Mullin said.
A DHS spokesperson provided a statement to Newsweek on Friday that neither confirmed nor denied the specifics of Mullin's claims but pointedly refused to rule anything out.
"As a matter of policy, DHS does not comment on specific investigative techniques, ongoing investigations, or potential future actions."
The spokesperson added a line that carried its own weight: "No one, including members of Congress, are above the law." That statement, while boilerplate in form, lands differently when directed at a sitting member of Congress who has faced growing scrutiny from federal investigators over the past several months.
Weeks before the Newsweek report, ICE reportedly declined to release certain records related to an Omar-related inquiry, citing ongoing enforcement proceedings. That refusal itself raised questions. Agencies typically withhold records under such exemptions only when active cases are in play, a detail that aligns with Mullin's description of a live investigation. As we noted when the story first broke, ICE's decision to withhold those records suggested something more than a dormant file.
The allegations are not new. They gained national attention in 2019 after then-President Donald Trump and several conservative organizations called for a formal investigation. Two major news organizations examined the claims that year.
The Minneapolis-based Star Tribune reviewed newly obtained records and communications related to Omar's marital history. The paper reported that some documents raised additional questions about the timeline of Omar's marriages and divorces, but the review did not establish that Elmi was her brother.
The New York Times also examined the accusations. It reported that while questions had been raised about Omar's personal history and marriage records, no publicly available evidence demonstrated that Elmi was Omar's sibling.
Neither outlet's review settled the matter. The records raised questions without providing definitive proof in either direction. What is different now is that a sitting cabinet secretary is publicly claiming the government possesses knowledge beyond what was available in 2019, and that a formal federal investigation is underway to act on it.
Omar's troubles have not been limited to immigration questions. She has faced scrutiny on other fronts as well, and the accumulation of unresolved controversies has made her one of the most embattled members of Congress.
Omar has not directly addressed Mullin's latest statements. But her broader political posture in recent months has moved sharply in the opposite direction from cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
At a press conference alongside Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Omar called for abolishing ICE entirely, impeaching DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and prosecuting ICE agents involved in fatal shootings in Minneapolis. She urged Democrats to vote against a DHS funding bill, Fox News reported, describing federal deportation enforcement as a "federal occupation" and "state-sanctioned violence and political retribution."
"We must abolish ICE. This moment demands it," Omar said.
She went further at a townhall, telling constituents that abolishing ICE is now "an easier conversation" than it was six or seven years ago when she first entered Congress. She also revealed that Democrats are having "active conversations" about what dismantling the entire Department of Homeland Security should look like, Breitbart reported.
The juxtaposition is hard to miss. A member of Congress under active federal investigation by DHS is simultaneously leading the charge to dismantle the very agency investigating her. Omar frames her opposition as principled resistance to an overreaching administration. Her critics see a lawmaker with a direct personal stake in weakening the institutions that hold the power to hold her accountable.
Omar has also faced questions about her financial disclosures, adding to a pattern of unresolved accountability questions that follow her public career.
No charges have been filed. No enforcement action has been taken. No court has ruled that Omar committed immigration fraud. Those facts matter, and they should temper any rush to conclusions.
But the facts that have emerged, Mullin's public certainty, ICE's refusal to release records under an active-enforcement exemption, and DHS's pointed reminder that no member of Congress is above the law, point to something more serious than a political talking point. This is no longer a rumor circulating on social media. The secretary of homeland security is saying, on the record, that his department believes Omar married her brother and that investigators are examining whether her family's entire immigration history involved fraud.
Several key questions remain unanswered. What specific evidence does DHS possess beyond what was publicly reported in 2019? Has a formal, named investigation been opened, and when? What records did ICE withhold, and what enforcement proceedings are they tied to? And what, precisely, does Mullin mean when he says investigators are examining "broader irregularities" in the family's immigration history?
Omar has every right to defend herself, and the investigation may ultimately produce nothing actionable. But the American public has every right to expect that the same immigration laws that apply to millions of ordinary applicants also apply to the people who create those laws. If a sitting member of Congress obtained her citizenship through fraud, that is not a political question. It is a legal one, and it deserves a straight answer.
