Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says an ongoing DHS investigation has determined that Rep. Ilhan Omar married her own brother to get him into the country, and that deportation remains on the table.
Mullin made the claim in an interview with conservative commentator Benny Johnson, stating flatly that the department has concluded the Minnesota Democrat committed immigration fraud. "We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States," Mullin said, the Daily Mail reported. He added: "We're investigating."
Omar has long denied the allegations. Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Mullin's latest statements. But the DHS secretary's willingness to discuss an active investigation publicly, a departure from standard practice, signals that the administration views the case as more than a political sideshow.
The question now is whether the federal government can, or will, move beyond investigation to enforcement against a sitting member of Congress who became a naturalized U.S. citizen more than two decades ago.
Federal officials typically decline to discuss active investigations. The DHS spokesperson's own statement reinforced that norm, saying the department "does not comment on specific investigative techniques, ongoing investigations, or potential future actions." But Mullin went further than any previous administration official, laying out the department's position in plain terms.
He told Johnson that the alleged fraud carries no statute of limitations. "There's no expiration to that," Mullin said. "If we can prove it that, maybe you shouldn't have been here in the first place, we'll deport you."
He also insisted the probe is not politically motivated. "When we move forward, it's not political," Mullin stated. The DHS spokesperson, while stopping short of confirming Mullin's specific claims, added a pointed line: "No one, including members of Congress, are above the law."
The tension between Mullin's public disclosures and the department's standard refusal to discuss open cases is hard to miss. Whether that gap reflects a deliberate strategy or a breakdown in messaging discipline, the result is the same: the allegations are now on the official record from the cabinet secretary who runs the department conducting the investigation.
Mullin's statements do not exist in a vacuum. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has separately refused to release records related to an immigration fraud investigation into Omar, citing an exemption under federal open-records law that applies only when an active or contemplated law enforcement proceeding is underway. Just the News reported that ICE invoked the exemption, known as FOIA 7(A), stating that "disclosure of any responsive records at this time could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings."
That legal standard matters. The exemption cannot be invoked casually, it requires an active or planned enforcement action. The refusal amounts to a federal agency confirming, through its own legal filings, that the Omar investigation is real and operational.
Vice President JD Vance has also weighed in, confirming that the Department of Justice is reviewing the allegations. "It certainly seems like something fishy is there," Vance said. "If we think that there's a crime, we're going to prosecute that crime." White House border czar Tom Homan confirmed separately that DHS was actively investigating whether Omar committed immigration fraud.
Omar's financial disclosures have already drawn investigative scrutiny in recent months, adding another layer of official interest in the congresswoman's conduct.
The allegations against Omar rest on a sequence of events that spans more than two decades. Omar became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000, at age 17. Two years later, she married Ahmed Hirsi in a Muslim ceremony that was never registered with the state.
At some point after that, the exact date has never been made public, Omar allegedly married a man named Ahmed Elmi. Both Omar and Elmi are originally from Somalia. The Daily Mail has previously reported that Elmi is Omar's brother. Omar was allegedly still married to Hirsi at the time of the second marriage.
Abdihakim Osman, described as a past friend of Omar, told the Daily Mail in 2020 that Omar had said she wanted to get her brother papers so he could remain in the United States. Osman said the marriage itself was kept quiet:
"No one knew there had been a wedding until the media turned up the marriage certificate years later."
After the marriage, Elmi enrolled at North Dakota State University, Omar's alma mater, and graduated in 2012. Mullin now claims Elmi "lives in London." The first public report connecting Omar and Elmi as siblings surfaced on a website called Somalispot in 2016, a year before Omar took her seat in the Minnesota state legislature.
Omar is now on her third marriage, to political consultant Tim Mynett. The couple was photographed at a White House event in 2024. Her husband's reported income and the household's financial disclosures have raised separate questions in recent reporting.
On Capitol Hill, the investigation has already produced political consequences. Rep. Randy Fine, a Florida Republican, is preparing a formal House resolution targeting Omar, not merely for removal from Congress, but for expulsion from the United States entirely.
"I don't think Ilhan Omar should be expelled from Congress. I think she should be expelled from the United States," Fine told Breitbart. He has tied his push to broader allegations of roughly $9 billion in pandemic-era welfare fraud in Minnesota, which he links to Omar's political base among Somali refugee communities.
Fine's resolution faces steep procedural hurdles. Expelling a sitting member of Congress requires a two-thirds vote, a threshold that has been met only a handful of times in American history, and never on immigration fraud grounds. But the resolution itself serves notice that Omar's Republican critics intend to force floor action, not just rhetoric.
Omar's dramatic swings in reported net worth have only fueled the broader scrutiny she faces.
Even if the DHS investigation produces evidence of fraud, the path to actually deporting Omar is narrow. She has held U.S. citizenship since 2000, a quarter century. Stripping citizenship from a naturalized American requires the government to prove, typically in federal court, that the naturalization was obtained through willful misrepresentation or concealment of a material fact.
That is a civil proceeding known as denaturalization, and it carries a high evidentiary burden. The government would need to show not just that Omar married a relative, but that doing so involved specific false statements on immigration or naturalization paperwork, and that those false statements were material to her admission or citizenship.
Mullin appeared to allude to falsified immigration documents as the potential deportable offense, but neither he nor the DHS spokesperson identified which documents are at issue. No charges have been filed. No deportation proceeding has been publicly initiated.
Omar's conduct in office has drawn scrutiny on other fronts as well, including questions about her congressional office arrangements and donor relationships.
Omar has denied the brother-marriage allegations for years. She has called them baseless and politically motivated. But her denials have never been accompanied by the kind of documentary evidence, birth certificates, family records, immigration filings, that would put the matter to rest.
Her office's silence in response to the Daily Mail's latest request for comment leaves the denial where it has always been: a flat assertion without public proof, facing an escalating series of official statements from cabinet-level officials and federal law enforcement agencies.
The DHS spokesperson's carefully worded statement, declining to confirm or deny specifics while asserting that no one is above the law, did not contradict Mullin's claims. That is not the same as confirming them. But it is not a denial, either.
Her campaign spending patterns have drawn their own scrutiny from federal election filings, adding to the list of unresolved questions surrounding the congresswoman.
Several critical questions remain unanswered. What specific documents does DHS believe were falsified? Has the department referred any findings to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution? Will Omar cooperate, or will she challenge any proceeding on constitutional and procedural grounds? And can the government realistically strip citizenship from a sitting member of Congress who has held it for 25 years?
The investigation is no longer a rumor or a social media talking point. ICE has invoked enforcement-proceeding exemptions to shield its records. The DHS secretary has gone on record. The vice president has confirmed DOJ involvement. A House member is drafting an expulsion resolution. The machinery is moving.
If the allegations hold up, the implications go beyond one congresswoman. They raise a simple question that voters have been asking for years: if an ordinary immigrant committed this kind of fraud, would the government hesitate to act? The answer should not change because the person involved holds a seat in Congress.
