Did Ilhan Omar marry her brother? Name dispute revives unfounded rumor

For years, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has been the subject of claims that she committed immigration fraud by marrying her brother, which Snopes has determined were unfounded. In October, President Donald Trump’s administration reopened an investigation against Omar in which it claimed to have more evidence about her family history and alleged she had committed identity fraud, leading to federal agents raiding her home in Washington, D.C.

Following this development, Snopes readers asked us to once again determine whether Omar married her brother to commit immigration fraud and whether the U.S. government had DNA evidence to substantiate that claim. 

The accusations continued to claim that Omar had married her brother, a man named Ahmed Elmi. New reporting from The New York Post claimed Omar’s father’s name was actually Nur Said Elmi, not Nur Omar Mohamed. According to the Post, a U.K. marriage certificate showed that Omar’s ex-husband lived in London with a woman named Leila Nur Said, who was believed to be Omar’s sister and whose father’s name also also Nur Said Elmi.

A Fox News story, citing anonymous sources, claimed Omar’s real name is Ilhan Nur Said Elmi. Motions filed by Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, related to the search warrant also referred to Omar as “Congresswoman Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar.” 

In an X post, responding to allegations about her name, Omar wrote: “So let’s make it crystal clear. My name has always been Ilhan Omar.”

A NewsNation report claimed the federal agents went through Omar’s garbage in the hopes of obtaining DNA samples during the raid on her house. Omar told MSNOW that she did not believe they had taken DNA samples, nor was she asked to provide any. Without DNA testing Elmi and Omar, there is no definitive proof they are siblings.

In an interview with MSNOW, asked directly whether she was related to Elmi in any way, Omar said, “Not to my knowledge.” 

We found that this was not evidence enough to support the claim she married her brother or committed immigration fraud. We have reached out to Omar’s office for a response to the above allegations, as well as to Pirro’s office, and will update this report accordingly. 

Below, we break down all the claims about Omar’s past marriages, her father’s name and her alleged sister:

What is the timeline of Omar’s marriages?

As we have reported previously, Omar was married twice before her current marriage to Tim Mynett: to Ahmed Hirsi (who was Ahmed Aden before he gained U.S. citizenship) and to a U.K. citizen, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi — the subject of the above claims.  

According to a statement Omar released in 2016, she and Hirsi applied for a marriage license in 2002. The couple married in an Islamic ceremony but never completed the process for a civil marriage, according to Hirsi. By 2008, Hirsi and Omar had separated (per Islamic custom). After that relationship ended, Omar had a civil marriage with Elmi in 2009. When that relationship ended, Elmi moved to England and they divorced per Islamic practice in 2011, but without receiving a legal divorce. 

Omar and Hirsi reconciled in 2011 and remarried in an Islamic ceremony, according to her statement. In 2017, Omar formally petitioned for divorce from Elmi, and legally wed Hirsi in 2018. Minnesota court records show Omar and Elmi’s marriage was legally dissolved on Dec. 4, 2017. Minnesota court records show Hirsi and Omar legally divorced on Nov. 22, 2019. Hirsi and Omar have three children together, according to court documents. 

Who is Omar’s father?

Nur Omar Mohamed died in 2020 from COVID-19 complications, according to a report in Sahan Journal, a Minnesotan news organization focusing on immigrant communities. The obituary described him as a prominent Somali military officer during the late-1970s Somalia-Ethiopia war.

The report noted Mohamed was a colonel during the dictatorship of Mohammed Siad Barre, who was removed from power in 1991, after which the country descended into civil war. Mohamed and his family subsequently became refugees. 

In a statement announcing his death, Omar referred to her father as Nur Omar Mohamed. However, in a deleted 2013 tweet about Father’s Day, Omar referred to her father as “Nur Said.” Many jumped on this as evidence that Omar’s father could also be the father of her ex-husband Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. 

In 2019, after Omar’s account deleted the tweet about her father, Omar’s spokesperson said (archived): 

When people write vile things on posts about people she loves—including posting disturbing doctored images of her father—she takes them down. Nur Said means ‘Happy Light’ and it’s been her dad’s nickname since he was a kid. He has a public page with the same name. She isn’t deleting it for the disturbing and hateful reasons that are being implied by conspiracy theorists.

According to the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, part of the Defense Department, Somalis have names with three or more components and don’t commonly use hereditary surnames. A Somali often receives a personal first name at birth, followed by their father’s first name, and then their grandfather’s first time. So most children, male or female, share their father’s and grandfather’s first names. However, many Somalis also have additional names based on their lineages or clans. The institute noted, “Because all three names come from a shared pool of personal names, many Somalis have names that are the same or similar.”

Omar’s tweet referring to her father as “Nur Said” on its own does not establish that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was her brother. The names Said, Nur, and Elmi are extremely common among Somali Muslims. Further, according to a 2016 profile of Omar, her paternal grandfather’s name was Abukar. 

Snopes was unable to find Mohamed’s original Facebook account. It is likely the account has been deleted. 

Is Omar related to Leila Nur Said? 

The New York Post connected Omar’s father’s Facebook account to Leila Nur Said, saying she frequently left “hearts” on his pictures. Snopes was unable to locate either account and thus cannot independently verify this connection.  

The Post’s pool of evidence that established these connections is flimsy. A U.K. marriage certificate obtained by the Post for Leila Nur Said lists Nur Said Elmi, a military officer, as her father. Ahmed Elmi is not mentioned on this certificate. The Post reported: “Elmi’s parentage is not known, but he lived in London with Leila Nur Said, a Somali woman who is thought to be Omar’s sister, who possibly raised him.”

Neither the Facebook connection to Omar’s father, nor the marriage certificate, can effectively establish Ahmed Elmi’s relationship with Leila Nur Said. 

Media reports claim Elmi is a doctoral researcher at the University of Bristol. We reached out through an email listed on the university website and will update this post accordingly. 

Our previous coverage

As we reported before, Omar showed a reporter from the Minnesota Star Tribune photos of documents from her family’s entry into the U.S. after fleeing the civil war. She did not provide the reporter with copies of these papers but showed that they listed her father and showed her as the youngest of seven children. There was no one named Ahmed Nur Said Elmi listed in the documents.

We previously noted that Omar and her siblings all arrived in U.S. with refugee statuses. Omar was a minor when she became a naturalized U.S. citizen. How one sibling could end up with a completely different immigration status from the others remains unexplained by the claims. 

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services policy, immigrants can apply for permanent residency status (opening the pathway to naturalization) if they are siblings of a U.S. citizen, or if they are married to a citizen. Any sibling of Omar would not have to marry her in order to secure a path to citizenship. If Elmi desperately wanted U.S. citizenship, he would not have immediately returned to England after his split with Omar. 

In sum …

There is not enough evidence establishing familial ties between Elmi and Omar. Media reports are relying on similar names to establish connections — disregarding Somali naming conventions in which unrelated people can share common names. Until we know more, we leave this claim unrated.

For further reading, we are have reported on numerous rumors about Omar, including that she allegedly fled to Morocco after the raid on her home and that she changed her birth year in official records. 

Sources