Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin claims an ongoing DHS investigation has determined that Rep. Ilhan Omar married her brother to get him into the country, and says deportation is on the table.
Mullin made the statements in an interview with conservative commentator Benny Johnson, declaring flatly that DHS has evidence the Minnesota Democrat committed immigration fraud years before she entered Congress. Omar has long denied the allegation. Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Mail, which first reported Mullin's remarks.
The claim is not new. Allegations that Omar's second husband, Ahmed Elmi, is actually her brother have circulated since 2016, when the website Somalispot first published the accusation. What changed is who is saying it, and the weight of the office behind the words. Mullin is the cabinet secretary who controls U.S. immigration enforcement, and he spoke as though the matter were settled fact.
In the interview, Mullin did not hedge. He told Johnson that DHS investigators had reached a conclusion about Omar's second marriage.
"We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States."
He added that Elmi now lives in London and that DHS is still building its case. When asked whether there was a statute of limitations on the alleged fraud, Mullin was direct.
"There's no expiration to that."
Mullin then raised the possibility of stripping Omar's right to remain in the country altogether. If the investigation proves Omar should not have been granted entry or citizenship in the first place, he said, the consequences could be severe.
"If we can prove it that, maybe you shouldn't have been here in the first place, we'll deport you."
He insisted the investigation was not driven by partisan motives. "When we move forward, it's not political," Mullin said.
The underlying allegations follow a trail that stretches back more than a decade. Omar became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000, when she was seventeen. Two years later, she married Ahmed Hirsi in a Muslim ceremony that was never registered with the state.
At some point after that, the exact date remains unclear, Omar allegedly married Elmi while still legally unmarried on paper but living as Hirsi's wife. According to a 2016 Somalispot report referenced by the Daily Mail, Elmi enrolled at North Dakota State University, Omar's alma mater, shortly after the marriage and graduated in 2012.
Abdihakim Osman, described as a past friend of Omar's, told the Daily Mail in 2020 that Omar had expressed a desire to help her brother obtain immigration papers while she was still with Hirsi. Osman's account suggested the marriage was not a typical union.
"No one knew there had been a wedding until the media turned up the marriage certificate years later."
Omar has denied the brother allegation repeatedly over the years. She is now married to her third husband, political consultant Tim Mynett. The two were photographed together at a White House event in 2024.
The pattern of legal and ethical questions surrounding Omar is not limited to her marriage history. ICE has separately withheld immigration records tied to the congresswoman, citing active enforcement proceedings, a disclosure that itself raised eyebrows about what federal agencies may be pursuing behind the scenes.
Cabinet officials and law enforcement leaders typically refuse to discuss active investigations in public. Mullin did the opposite. He named the target, described the alleged conduct, and stated a possible outcome, deportation, all while the probe was still underway.
The DHS press office appeared to acknowledge the tension. A spokesperson issued a statement that stopped short of confirming Mullin's claims but did not deny them either.
"As a matter of policy, DHS does not comment on specific investigative techniques, ongoing investigations, or potential future actions."
The spokesperson added a pointed line: "No one, including members of Congress, are above the law."
That second sentence landed as something more than boilerplate. It echoed the thrust of Mullin's own remarks, that holding elected office does not shield anyone from immigration enforcement.
Omar has faced scrutiny on multiple fronts beyond immigration questions. A congressional ethics office review cleared her over financial disclosures that were off by millions of dollars, though the resolution left significant questions unanswered about how such large discrepancies occurred in the first place.
Even if DHS concludes that Omar falsified immigration documents, acting on that finding would be extraordinarily difficult. Omar has been a naturalized citizen since 2000. Revoking citizenship, known as denaturalization, requires the government to prove in federal court that citizenship was obtained through fraud or misrepresentation. It is a rare and resource-intensive legal process.
Mullin did not address those legal complexities in the interview. He framed the matter as straightforward: prove the fraud, remove the person. Whether the courts would agree is another question entirely.
The allegations have also drawn attention in Minnesota's political landscape, where a retired state trooper mounted a fraud-focused campaign against Omar in her congressional district, making her immigration controversies a central issue for voters.
The congresswoman's personal and family controversies have not been confined to the marriage allegations. Minneapolis police raided the home of Omar's son and seized firearms in an incident that generated significant attention on social media, adding to a growing list of legal entanglements connected to the Omar family.
Trump has posted about Omar in critical terms dozens of times on social media and has pushed for her to be investigated. Omar has long been one of his most frequent political targets. Mullin's public statements bring a new dimension to that dynamic, the accusations are no longer coming from social media posts or opposition research but from the head of the federal department responsible for immigration enforcement.
For all of Mullin's certainty in the interview, major gaps remain. DHS has not disclosed what specific documents it believes were falsified. The department has not said when the investigation began or whether it represents a new inquiry or a continuation of prior probes. The precise date of Omar's alleged marriage to Elmi has not been publicly established, and the marriage certificate, referenced in reporting, has not been released by DHS.
Omar herself has not responded to Mullin's latest claims. Her long-standing denial remains her most recent public position on the matter.
The DHS spokesperson's refusal to confirm the investigation's details, even as Mullin was openly discussing them, created an unusual split. One arm of the department was making the case in public while the other was insisting the department does not discuss such things.
If the allegations hold up, the case against Omar would represent one of the most consequential immigration fraud investigations in modern congressional history. If they do not, it will look like the federal government's enforcement apparatus was deployed against a political opponent without the goods to back it up. Either way, the American public deserves a straight answer, and so far, they have not gotten one.
