by Sharon Rondeau
(Jan. 14, 2026) — On Wednesday morning President Trump repeated his apparent intent to see Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN5) expelled from the United States, asserting she “married her brother.”
Trump has previously made that claim in regard to the “first Somali-American lawmaker in the United States,” terming her “a loser,” “a terrible person” and expressing his desire to deport any Somalis who have defrauded the United States.
His remarks were made in response to an article published in Just the News reporting, in the wake of the uncovering of a massive fraud scandal in Minnesota in November, “Officials told Just the News that Transportation Security Administration agents tracked and flagged about $136 million in bulk cash in outbound luggage at the passenger checkpoints at John Glenn Columbus International Airport since November 2023. This follows reports that millions of dollars were discovered leaving Minnesota airports.”
Multiple reports say monies sent by Somalis in Minneapolis and Seattle to overseas locations overseas went to support the terrorist group Al-Shabaab. Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a tightening of restrictions on wiring money outside the country in an attempt to combat taxpayer dollars possibly funding terrorism.
“They should be thrown out of the USA,” Trump wrote in Wednesday’s post, referencing the Somali population, which appears to comprise the bulk of the individuals who committed fraud against Minnesota and US taxpayers in the pilfering of what is said to be over $9 billion in social-service funding.
“The cash movements were made by U.S. citizens of Somali origin who flew out of the Columbus airport en route to either the airports in Minneapolis or Atlanta, and the couriers always declared the cash as legally required on documents, officials said,” the article continued. “…The officials said they appear to have uncovered a massive cash movement operation that gathered money from multiple Somali immigrant communities in the West, Midwest and South that eventually brought luggage filled with currency to Minneapolis for flights overseas.”
From his remarks, Trump appears confident that multiple sources having reported Omar’s 2009 marriage to a blood brother are accurate and claims she carried out a “scam.”
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem appeared to make a reference to Omar’s “marriage” to her brother in a December 7 interview with Laura Ingraham of “The Ingraham Angle.”
An entry in Minnesota’s marriage records shows on February 12, 2009, Omar married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, who researchers, including Miranda Devine of the New York Post, say is her brother as allegedly proven by DNA collected from family members.
Reportedly, Omar did not divorce Elmi until 2017, though by that time evidence points to his having left the United States to return to the UK.
A year later, Omar married Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi, the father of her three children born previously to her “marriage” to Elmi.
In 2002, Omar reportedly entered into a “religious” union with Hirsi not recorded by the state, but her later marriage to him is noted in the records.
In 2019, Omar divorced Hirsi. “Five months later,” People Magazine reported, she married Tim Mynett, a Democratic fundraiser and consultant who “worked on her congressional campaign.”
According to a financial disclosure report Omar signed in May 2025, Mynett’s and her assets are now valued at over $30 million.
In June 2019, Omar was adjudged by the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board to have misused campaign funds in 2016 and 2017 after State Rep. Steve Drazkowski filed two complaints against her. The Board ultimately ordered Omar to reimburse her campaign $3,469.23 and pay a fine of $500 out of personal funds.
Some claim Omar “married” Elmi to facilitate his entry into the United States to attend college on taxpayer-funded financial aid. Both reportedly attended North Dakota State University at the time.
In June, newly-appointed Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate directed his staff to focus on five administration priorities, including “denaturalization” for those who received U.S. citizenship resulting from fraud.
Beyond the questions over Omar’s reported marriage to her brother, it is unknown if she ever became a U.S. citizen herself. If she is not a citizen, according to Article I of the U.S. Constitution, she is ineligibile to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives or the Minnesota House, where she served one term prior to running successfully for Congress.
A 2022 video produced by then-Minnesota DFL District 5 primary challenger AJ Kern raised the question as to whether the timeline Omar provided of her alleged 2000 naturalization was accurate. Within a few days of the video’s appearance, Omar instructed that her congressional and former Minnesota legislative websites change her birth year from 1981 to 1982, which would have rendered her under 18 at the time of her father’s claimed naturalization and therefore ostensibly eligible for derivative citizenship.
However, USCIS informed Kern in 2023 that it possesses no naturalization record for Omar’s father, who reportedly died in 2020.