Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin publicly declared that Rep. Ilhan Omar married her brother to game the immigration system, and confirmed a federal investigation that could end in her deportation.
Mullin made the statements Thursday at the GOP midterm convention in Dallas, sitting down with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson for an interview that put the long-simmering allegations against the Minnesota Democrat squarely on the record from the nation's top immigration enforcement official. The DHS secretary did not hedge. He said the department knows what happened and is building a case.
"We know that she married her brother to try to bring him to the United States," Mullin told Johnson. "We know he lives now in London."
The man in question is Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a UK citizen whom Omar legally married in February 2009, according to a Hennepin County marriage certificate previously obtained by the New York Post. Omar dissolved that marriage roughly a month before she legally married Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi in January 2018. She has denied that Elmi is her brother, calling the accusation "absurd and offensive" in a 2016 interview with MPR News.
Mullin went further than any previous administration official, laying out the legal stakes in plain terms. Marriage fraud is a federal crime carrying up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. And Mullin made clear that lying on an immigration application carries no statute of limitations.
"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."
That statement from the sitting DHS secretary, aimed at a sitting member of Congress, marks an extraordinary escalation. Omar, who was born in Somalia, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000 at age 17.
Mullin appeared to anticipate the inevitable accusation that the probe is politically motivated. He pushed back preemptively, telling Johnson the department wants a case built on facts, not headlines.
"Here's what I want to make sure we do: if we actually move a case forward, it's not a political case, it's an actual case, because they did things wrong."
He also suggested the investigation may extend beyond the marriage itself. "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 said. That language hints at a broader review of Omar's family immigration history, not just the single marriage certificate.
The DHS secretary is not operating alone. Vice President JD Vance told Benny Johnson in March that the administration had already reached a conclusion about Omar's conduct.
"We actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America."
Vance added that the Department of Justice is reviewing the matter. "If we think that there's a crime, we're going to prosecute that crime," he said in a separate interview.
President Trump weighed in publicly in May, telling a crowd that he believes Omar "married her brother, which is totally illegal." Three senior officials, the president, the vice president, and the DHS secretary, have now made on-the-record statements accusing a sitting congresswoman of immigration fraud.
Institutional records back up the claim that this is more than talk. ICE refused a Freedom of Information Act request for records related to the Omar investigation, citing the legal exemption for ongoing "enforcement proceedings" under federal law. That specific exemption, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(A), which shields records that could interfere with active law enforcement, is not invoked casually. Agencies use it when a case is live.
Border czar Tom Homan confirmed as early as December 2025 that DHS was actively investigating whether Omar committed immigration fraud by allegedly marrying her brother. "We're pulling the records, we're pulling the files. We're looking at it," Homan said. "I'm running that down this week."
Omar's office has pushed back. Her chief of staff, Connor McNutt, called the allegations "a ridiculous lie and desperate attempt to distract" from what he described as the administration's unpopular policies, declining poll numbers, and rising gas prices. McNutt issued that statement earlier this year.
Omar herself has maintained her denial for years. In 2016, she told MPR News: "Insinuations that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is my brother are absurd and offensive." She has described her relationship with Elmi as brief, claiming they were separated for most of the marriage except between 2009 and 2011. There is no record of Omar and Elmi having children together.
But a Minneapolis-based Somali community leader has offered a different version. Abdihakim Osman, a blogger who told the Daily Mail in 2020 that he knew Omar growing up in Minnesota, said she introduced Elmi as her brother from London to members of the local Somali community in the late 2000s. Omar, Osman said, told people her sibling was looking for "papers", a common reference to immigration documents such as a green card.
"No one knew there had been a wedding [to Elmi] until the media turned up the marriage certificate years later."
That account, if accurate, directly contradicts Omar's insistence that Elmi is not her brother. It also raises the question of why a legal marriage would be kept hidden from the community, unless the purpose of that marriage was something other than a genuine union.
One detail from the timeline stands out. In June 2012, an Instagram photo showed Elmi holding a newborn girl he referred to as his niece. That same month and year, Omar's youngest daughter was born, according to a 2019 report from the Minnesota Star Tribune. The photo was later deleted. The original allegations that Elmi was Omar's brother first surfaced on SomaliSpot, a Somali politics discussion board, at least a decade ago. Those posts were also deleted, according to City Journal.
Omar's broader pattern of financial and ethical questions extends well beyond the marriage fraud allegations. Her revised financial disclosures wiped out millions in reported assets, and she has refused to explain the discrepancies.
The allegations are now driving concrete political consequences beyond the executive branch. Rep. Randy Fine, a Florida Republican, is preparing a formal House resolution targeting Omar over the immigration fraud claims. Fine has gone further than most, arguing that Omar should not merely face congressional discipline.
"I don't think Ilhan Omar should be expelled from Congress. I think she should be expelled from the United States," Fine said.
Meanwhile, questions about Omar's family finances continue to mount. Her husband's reported income collapsed from millions to $200 in a single year in her financial filings, a discrepancy that has drawn its own scrutiny.
No formal charges or indictment have been announced against Omar as of Mullin's Thursday statements. The DHS secretary was careful to note the investigation remains ongoing. But the trajectory is unmistakable: three of the most senior officials in the federal government have publicly accused a sitting congresswoman of committing a serious federal crime, and the enforcement arm of the government is withholding records under the legal shield reserved for active cases.
Omar's campaign spending on luxury hotels and car services far from her district has already raised questions about how she handles the public trust. The marriage fraud investigation raises a more fundamental one: whether she should have been in a position to hold that trust at all.
The congresswoman's denial has not changed since 2016. The evidence around her has. And the people with the power to act on it are no longer just talking, they are, by their own account, building a case. If the facts hold up, Omar will not be the victim of a political vendetta. She will be the product of a system that looked the other way for too long.
When a member of Congress refuses to answer basic questions about her own family, the public is right to wonder what else she is unwilling to explain.
Americans who followed every rule to earn their citizenship deserve to know that the law applies to the people who create it, too.