The Somali-born Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar has long been a frequent target of President Donald Trump’s calls for deportation. This week, he renewed his attacks, repeating the claim that she entered the U.S. by marrying her brother.
Trump has been calling for Omar to “go back” to Somalia for over six years now. During his 2020 reelection campaign, he repeatedly claimed that she is disloyal to the nation. However, his attacks turned into deportation threats as soon as he assumed office for a second term in 2025. He began calling Omar’s citizenship “illegal,” even though she has been a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2000.
Adding to his diatribe, Trump alleged that Omar married her own brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, to help him get immigration status, thereby committing “immigration fraud.”
Trump renewed his baseless attacks against Ilhan Omar
In an X post on Nov. 28, Trump called Omar the worst “Congressman/woman” in our country and said she “probably came into the U.S.A. illegally.” Attacking both her religion and her origin country, he wrote:
Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country, its Constitution, and how “badly” she is treated, when her place of origin is a decadent, backward, and crime ridden nation, which is essentially not even a country for lack of Government, Military, Police, schools, etc.
Then, while speaking to reporters on Air Force One after Thanksgiving, he again asserted that Omar “supposedly came into our country by marrying her brother.” Accidentally admitting that he himself doesn’t know if his claims are true, he said,
If that’s true, she shouldn’t be a congresswoman, and we should throw her the HELL out of the country!”
When did Omar become a US citizen, and did she marry her brother?
Ilhan Omar came into the U.S. as a refugee in 1995 after her family spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp to flee the war in Somalia. She was only 13 years old at the time and was granted U.S. citizenship upon turning 18 in 2000. The rumors about her husband allegedly being her brother stem from an anonymous 2016 post on a Somali-American internet forum.
Omar debunked those claims in 2016, calling them “absurd and offensive,” while providing a full timeline of her marriage. Fact-checkers and investigators also failed to provide any credible evidence to prove that Omar and Elmi are siblings. In 2020, the FBI also reportedly reviewed the case, but never released any evidence of Omar’s alleged “fraud.” (via TOI)
Trump cannot deport her over his unsubstantiated conspiracy theory
Despite the lack of evidence, Trump keeps using the same narrative to attack Omar and fulfill his agenda. In response to his latest social media posts, Omar simply said, “I have no worry. I don’t know how they can take away my citizenship, like, deport me.” She also laughed in the face of Trump’s attempts to threaten her, saying,
“I don’t even know why that’s such a scary threat. I’m not the 8-year-old who escaped war anymore. I’m grown, my kids have grown, I go and live wherever I want.”
And with that single line, she shelved Trump’s dreams to coerce her.
Published: Dec 1, 2025 03:46 pm