The early morning Homeland Security raid of US Representative Ilhan Omar‘s Washington home Monday should come as a shock to no one.
As the reporter who broke most of the stories about her complicated marital life, I have been expecting it since the day Donald Trump walked into the White House for the second time.
The only surprise is that the move against the Minnesota Congresswoman came just three weeks before she’s up for re-election on November 3 – and clearly breaks an unwritten Justice Department rule that normally prevents any such action against a candidate within 60 days of an upcoming election.
But the Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to so many norms we should have known it would have no compunction in breaking this one.
The real question is whether the administration has enough evidence to prove that Ahmed Elmi, the man the five-term Democrat married in February 2009, is actually her brother, as has been alleged to me and the Daily Mail many times.
If so, the administration will almost certainly make moves to have Omar thrown out of the country for breaking immigration rules.
I first started reporting on Omar’s love life in the summer of 2019 when I received a tip that she had been seen dining at an Italian restaurant in out-of-the-way Playa Del Rey, California and seemed close with her bespectacled companion. She was married at the time.
That man turned out to be her political consultant, Tim Mynett. He was also married at the time with a teenage son.
US Representative Ilhan Omar’s home in Washington, DC was raided by federal agents early Monday amid a probe into immigration papers filled out on her behalf by her father when she was a child
From there I started getting tips about her tangled love life and, especially, about her February 2009 marriage to Elmi.
Abdihakim Osman Nur, a community leader in Minneapolis, first told me back in 2020 that Omar and her then-husband Ahmed Hirsi – who is known by the nickname Southside – had introduced the flamboyant Elmi to him as her brother.
‘He was very feminine in the way he dressed – he would wear light lipstick and pink clothes and very, very, short shorts in the summer,’ Nur said.
‘People started whispering about him.’
We uncovered Omar’s marriage license application with Elmi filed at a Hennepin County office in Eden Prairie, Minnesota when she was 26 and he was 23.
On their marriage application they gave their address as Columbia Heights, Minnesota, but were married 25 miles away in Eden Prairie at a nondescript single-story brick building that houses a county office and a library.
Despite both being Muslim, the ceremony was conducted by Wilecia Harris, a Christian minister. ‘If they had gone to an imam he would have almost certainly have known if they were related,’ one Somali leader in Minnesota said.
Despite both Elmi, now 41, and Omar, 44, being Muslim, the ceremony was conducted by Christian minister Wilecia Harris. When we approached Harris, she refused to comment on why the two had asked her to marry them.
The minister’s husband, Marcus Harris, told us: ‘My wife doesn’t want to be involved or interviewed about Congresswoman Omar. It’s not going to happen, not now and not never.’
Omar married Ahmed Hirsi (pictured together) in 2002 in a religious ceremony that was not recognized by law. In 2019, she spent months denying she had split from him after the Daily Mail revealed she was having an affair with a campaign aide. Omar finally filed for divorce from Hirsi in 2019
Omar left her first husband so she could marry Ahmed Elmi in 2009. Omar has been accused of going into that marriage solely to allow Elmi – a British citizen – to enter the US. Political enemies have long noted Elmi is her brother. Source: Ahmed Nur Said Elmi/Facebook
The application for marriage filled in by Ilhan Omar and Ahmed Elmi. The ceremony in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, was officiated by a Christian minister
Nur also claimed the reason that the couple asked a Christian minister to officiate was because the imam at their local mosque in Minneapolis would have known they were siblings and refused to marry them.
‘She said she needed to get papers for her brother to go to school,’ Nur told me. ‘We all thought she was just getting papers together to allow him to stay in this country.
‘Once she had the papers they could apply for student loans.
‘They both moved to North Dakota to go to school but she was still married to Southside. In the Somali way, the only marriage that mattered was the one in the mosque,’ he said.
Omar has had a complicated marital life.
She wed Hirsi – the father of her daughters Isra and Ilwad, and son Adnan – in 2002, in a religious ceremony that was not recognized by law. Then, after supposedly splitting from him, she married Elmi, who had been living in Britain, in 2009.
According to my sources, that marriage was purely to allow Elmi to attend North Dakota State University – Omar’s own alma mater – and no one has ever suggested the marriage to her alleged brother was consummated.
Instead, Omar continued to see Hirsi, having their third child, Ilwad, in 2012. She finally divorced Elmi in 2017, allowing her to marry Hirsi in a civil ceremony the following year, just before she was first elected to Congress.
I first started reporting on Omar’s love life in the summer of 2019 when I received a tip that Omar had been seen dining at an Italian restaurant in out-of-the-way Playa Del Rey, California
Ilhan Omar caused a stir when the Daily Mail revealed in 2019 that she was living on and off with her married campaign aide Tim Mynett. The pair were pictured secretly coming in and out of Omar’s DC pad repeatedly. Photos provided by Probe-Media for Daily Mail
Mynett and Omar wed in 2019, five months after she split for good from Hirsi. Source: Tim Mynett/X
But this time the marriage didn’t work out and she left him for good in 2019 – just five months before she married Mynett, who converted to Islam after they wed.
The marriage effectively ended when Hirsi paid a visit to his wife’s Washington, DC apartment and found her and Mynett lounging around in pajamas – a strict no-no for Muslim women, who aren’t allowed to be alone with men who aren’t their husband or a close relative.
Hirsi had long suspected Omar was having an affair, and here was the proof. He went on to marry again just 37 days after their divorce went through.
Omar could have cleared up the whole story of her marriage to Elmi. But in her 2020 autobiography, This is What America Looks Like, she barely mentioned the incident at all.
She went into great detail about her family’s flight from war-torn Somalia to a refugee camp in Kenya, her move to the United States, and her rise through local Minnesota politics that led to to her 2018 election to the House of Representatives.
She even wrote about miscarrying twins during her marriage to Hirsi.
But when it came to her second marriage, details were scant, with Omar claiming instead that she had a ‘Britney Spears-style meltdown’ at the time.
‘I not only eloped with a man – whom I spent so 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 – but I shaved my head,’ she wrote.
‘Yes, like the beleaguered pop star, who shaved her head in 2007, I took clippers to my own head.
Hirsi and Omar (pictured together) wed in a 2002 religious ceremony, though their marriage was not recognized by law. She left him to marry Elmi in 2009. After Omar and Elmi divorced in 2017, she finally married Hirsi in a civil ceremony the following year – just before she was first elected to Congress
Ilhan Omar and her now-ex-husband Ahmed Hirsi have three children together: Ilwad (far left), Adnan and Isra. They are pictured together in 2019
As the reporter who broke most of the stories about Ilhan Omar’s complicated marital life, Martin Gould (pictured) reveals why he has been expecting the Homeland Security raid on the Democrat’s home
‘Too many headaches, too little sleep – I had to flee myself, my relationships, my hair,’ she continued.
‘The difference between Britney and me is that I wore a hijab, so nobody knew what I had done – except my children who were very surprised. ‘Mommy looks like me,’ Adnan [her son] declared. And he was right, I did look like a little boy.’
She wrote that, like Spears – who eloped with childhood friend Jason Alexander in 2004 only to have the marriage annulled after two days – ‘my impulsive second marriage ended in divorce’.
In the book, Omar only returned to the marriage when she discussed her election to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2016.
She said an anonymous post on a Somali website ‘established two simple facts, which were true, but that unleashed a torrent of speculation and conspiracies that follow me to this day.
‘They were that I had applied for a marriage license in 2002 and then again, in 2009, when I eloped.
‘These facts – which are true – were couched in speculation that I had married a relative illegally, to get him entry into the United States – which isn’t true.’
Omar says she has never been able to find out who posted the allegation.
‘The blog post appeared on Somali Spot, an online Somali discussion forum,’ she wrote.
Homeland Security Investigations police searched the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar first thing Monday – in a major escalation of a case border czar Tom Homan first revealed in mid-September
‘If someone had accurate information or true concerns that I had committed an immigration crime, they would have gone to the Star Tribune with it,’ she said, referring to the Minneapolis newspaper.
But time may now have run out for Omar and her attempts to bury the truth about her mysterious second husband, who is now said to be back living in London.
The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly focusing on immigration papers her late father completed on her behalf when she was a minor.
Omar, who came to the US with her father in 1995, when she was 12 years old, became an American citizen at the age of 17.
The raid on her home is a major escalation of an inquiry that DHS border czar Tom Homan first revealed in mid-September.
Pressed on whether Omar was under investigation, Homan refused to discuss specifics but warned: ‘No one’s above the law.’ He also declined to rule out stripping her of her American citizenship.
Days earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the probe reached beyond the Congresswoman’s disputed second marriage and warned that removal actions could follow if wrongdoing is proven.
The Daily Mail has contacted Omar’s office for comment on Monday’s raid.
