Arab News | Trump administration investigating Ilhan Omar over citizenship, alleged marriage fraud

CHICAGO: US immigration authorities are investigating allegations concerning the citizenship and past marriages of Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, according to White House border czar Tom Homan.

Homan told Fox News on Sunday that the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were examining allegations that Omar had committed “immigration or naturalization fraud.”

He declined to provide details of the investigation but said that authorities were looking into claims that Omar had entered into a “sham marriage to enable someone to acquire citizenship illegally.”

Homan said that the DHS was reviewing Omar’s immigration records.

Officials at the White House, DHS and ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Homan’s statements.

Omar has repeatedly denied allegations of wrongdoing relating to her immigration history and marriages. She did not respond to requests for comment on Homan’s latest remarks.

Homan, a former law enforcement official who previously served at ICE, was appointed by President Donald Trump to oversee border and immigration policy during his second administration.

Omar arrived in the US in March 1995 after fleeing the Somali civil war and spending about four years in a refugee camp in Kenya. She became a US citizen in 2000 at the age of 17.

According to public records, she has married three times.

She married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009 and divorced him in 2017. She married Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi, the father of her three children, in 2018 before the couple divorced the following year.

In March 2020, Omar married Tim Mynett, a political consultant who had worked on her congressional campaign.

Questions were subsequently raised over payments by Omar’s campaign to Mynett’s consulting firm, although investigations into the spending did not result in charges against her.

The scrutiny of Omar comes amid renewed political controversy over a series of large-scale fraud cases involving federal programs in Minnesota.

Trump has claimed that as much as $19 billion in federal and state funds was lost through fraudulent schemes in the state, many involving members of Minnesota’s large Somali-American community. The broader figure has been disputed and encompasses allegations extending beyond the best-known federal prosecution.

One of the largest cases centered on Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota nonprofit organization that administered federally funded child-nutrition programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Federal prosecutors established that participants in the scheme fabricated meal counts, attendance records, invoices and companies to claim reimbursement for meals that were often never served.

More than $240 million was fraudulently obtained through the program, according to prosecutors, with money diverted to real estate, vehicles, travel and other personal expenses.

Many of those charged were Somali Americans, although Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock was not Somali. The case involved specific individuals and organizations and did not establish wrongdoing by Minnesota’s Somali community as a whole.

Bock was convicted and in 2026 sentenced to 500 months — 41 years and eight months — in federal prison. As of March prosecutors had reported 63 convictions linked to the investigation, with further prosecutions and sentencing proceedings continuing.

In an interview with Arab News in May, Bock said that she believed Omar’s connections to individuals involved in the scandal should be investigated.

Omar has not been charged with participating in the Feeding Our Future fraud. Republican critics have nevertheless called for further scrutiny of her links to individuals and organizations connected to the case.

One focus has been legislation introduced by Omar in March 2020. The Maintaining Essential Access to Lunch for Students Act sought to give the US agriculture secretary authority to waive certain school meal requirements during the pandemic so that food could continue reaching children while schools were closed.

Critics have argued that pandemic-era waivers weakened safeguards and helped create conditions in which Feeding Our Future expanded rapidly.

However, Minnesota’s legislative auditor did not find that Omar designed the legislation to facilitate fraud.

The auditor found that COVID-era waivers altered normal monitoring requirements and that the Minnesota Department of Education failed to exercise adequate oversight, including by not properly investigating complaints or verifying claims submitted by Feeding Our Future.

Another connection cited by critics involves Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis, one of the meal distribution sites associated with Feeding Our Future.

Omar appeared in Somali-language promotional videos filmed at the restaurant discussing the federal food program and its efforts to distribute meals.

Federal prosecutors later alleged that Safari and associated sites were involved in tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent claims.

In January 2025 Safari co-owner Abdulkadir Nur Salah pleaded guilty to participating in the scheme. The US Department of Justice said that Safari received more than $16 million in fraudulent program funds.

There is no allegation in the federal case that Omar participated in that fraud and she has not been charged with any offense arising from the Feeding Our Future investigation.