Ilhan Omar ‘married her brother’: Trump’s top official’s big claim against Democratic lawmaker

A cabinet secretary just said it out loud on live television. Ilhan Omar calls it a lie. Here is the story behind the claim, and what proof actually exists.

3 min readSep 13, 2026 10:40 AM IST First published on: Sep 13, 2026 at 10:40 AM IST

US Representative Ilhan Omar. (File Photo/Reuters)

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has made a startling claim on live television: Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, he says, married her own brother to smuggle him into the United States. The remark, delivered on a convention stage rather than in a courtroom, has thrown a years-old rumour straight back into the national spotlight, Newsweek reports.

Mullin dropped the claim while sitting down with conservative commentator Benny Johnson at the Republican National Convention on Thursday. “We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States,” he said, according to Newsweek. He did not stop there. Mullin suggested the entire Omar family’s journey to America deserves a second look, adding, “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.”

He called it an “ongoing investigation” but offered no papers, no charges, and no proof.

The marriage at the centre of the storm

The claim goes back to 2009, when Omar legally married British citizen Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. For years, critics have insisted Elmi was actually her biological brother, and that the marriage was a paper arrangement designed to get him into the country — a crime known as immigration fraud. The couple divorced in 2017, and no public evidence has ever confirmed the family link.

The rumour first exploded onto the national stage in 2019, when Donald Trump and several conservative groups demanded an investigation. Seven years on, it still has not produced a single piece of public proof yet it has just resurfaced from the mouth of a sitting cabinet secretary.

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A political case, or something more?

Pressed on whether the probe was politically motivated, Mullin pushed back hard. “If we actually move a case forward, it’s not a political case,” he said. “It’s an actual case because they did things wrong.”

The Department of Homeland Security itself was far more guarded. A spokesperson would only say that officials do not discuss ongoing investigations, adding a pointed line: “No one, including members of Congress, are above the law.”

Omar fires back

Omar has spent years knocking the claim down, calling it false and politically motivated. She has framed the entire saga as a distraction, aimed at pulling attention away from other government business rather than uncovering any real wrongdoing.

What the record actually shows

Strip away the noise, and the paper trail tells a thinner story. A 2019 investigation by the Star Tribune raised questions about the timing of Omar’s marriages and divorces but stopped well short of proving Elmi was her brother. The New York Times ran its own examination and reached the same dead end: unanswered questions, but no proof of a sibling link.

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The claim is back in the headlines, but the fundamentals have not changed. No court has ever ruled that Omar committed immigration fraud. No agency has ever produced evidence proving Elmi was her brother. What has changed is who is saying it and how loudly. Newsweek reports it reached out to Omar’s office for comment but had not received a reply at the time of publication.

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