From Death Squads to the U.S. Congress: The Documented Trail of Fraud, Incest, and Treason Behind Ilhan Omar

Leave a CommentFrom Death Squads to the U.S. Congress: The Documented Trail of Fraud, Incest, and Treason Behind Ilhan OmarFeatured

In the sun-baked chaos of 1970s Somalia, under the iron-fisted rule of dictator Siad Barre, a young officer named Nur Omar Mohamed rose through the ranks of the Somali National Army. Born in the coastal town of Bandarbeyla and educated in Mogadishu, Mohamed became a colonel, commanding a regiment during the brutal Ogaden War against Ethiopia in 1977-78—a conflict that left tens of thousands dead and sowed the seeds of Somalia’s unraveling.

But his service extended into Barre’s darkest chapter: the regime’s systematic genocide against the Isaaq clan from 1987 to 1989. What began as a ruthless counterinsurgency escalated into mass killings, aerial bombings of civilian cities like Hargeisa, rape, land-mining of pastures, and the displacement of half a million people—acts the UN later deemed genocidal.

As a high-ranking officer, Mohamed was no mere bystander; he enforced orders in a machine of state terror that flattened entire communities and earned Barre pariah status on the world stage. When the Barre regime crumbled in 1991 amid civil war, Mohamed’s family—Ilhan among them, then just eight years old—did not flee as innocent victims of the violence they claim. They fled as architects of it, their side routed by the very clans they had targeted, seeking refuge from the backlash of their own making.

The Omars spent four grueling years in Kenya’s Utango refugee camp near Mombasa, a sprawling limbo of hunger, disease, and despair where Ilhan first tasted the raw edge of survival—though her memoir glosses over the regime’s sins that drove them there.

In 1995, after a vetting process that laundered their past, they touched down in New York as refugees, courtesy of U.S. asylum. Nur, stripped of his uniform, hustled as a taxi driver in Arlington, Virginia, before relocating to Minneapolis’s burgeoning Somali enclave, where he toiled at the post office until his death from COVID-19 in 2020.

Ilhan, raised by this former colonel and her grandfather—a man who preached democracy but served a tyrant—naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2000 at age 17. She attended North Dakota State University, served as a community organizer, and rocketed into Minnesota politics: state representative in 2016, then Congress in 2018 as part of “The Squad,” the first Somali-American Muslim woman in the House.

Her story sold as a refugee triumph, but cracks soon spiderwebbed through it.

By 2002, at 20, Ilhan entered an Islamic marriage with Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi, bearing three children amid a tangled web of unions that would ignite federal scrutiny. In 2009, while still religiously wed to Hirsi, she entered a civil marriage in Minnesota with Ahmed Nur Said Elmi—a British citizen three years her junior.

She later claimed separation from Elmi in 2011, yet conceived her third child with Hirsi in 2012; her divorce from Elmi dragged until 2017. Only then did she civilly marry Hirsi in 2018—divorcing him a year later amid an affair with political consultant Tim Mynett, whom she wed in 2020.

This marital maze, uncovered by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2019, raised red flags: joint addresses, shared bank accounts, and campaign filings listing Elmi as her “brother.”

The whispers turned to thunder in 2016, when Somali-American forums alleged Elmi was her brother—a sham marriage to fraudulently secure his U.S. immigration papers, violating federal law against marriage fraud (up to five years in prison and $250,000 fines).

Ilhan dismissed it as “disgusting lies,” but evidence mounted: eviction notices tying Elmi to her apartment, Instagram photos of intertwined lives, and witnesses claiming she admitted, “I would do what I had to do” to keep him in America.

Minnesota State Rep. Steve Drazkowski, who launched one of the earliest probes, unearthed sworn affidavits, a marriage certificate, and what he called “DNA evidence” linking Elmi to the family—fueling charges of bigamy, perjury, incest, and immigration fraud.

The Minnesota Campaign Finance Board nailed her in 2019 for unreported income from a speech (later repaid), but Drazkowski’s 2025 dossier escalated: tax fraud via falsified filings, student loan abuse, campaign kickbacks, and bribery spanning Boston to Florida. “She appears to be a serial career criminal,” he thundered, demanding FBI arrest and Attorney General action for defrauding the U.S. government.

https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2025/12/09/trump-lashes-out-at-ilhan-omar-accuses-her-of-marrying-brother

Fact-checkers like Snopes call the brother claim “unfounded” for lack of birth records, but inconsistencies persist—no DNA publicly released, no full exoneration—and President Trump revived it viciously on December 9, 2025: “I don’t want to see a woman that… marries her brother to get in and then becomes a congressman, does nothing but complain.”

He vowed to strip Temporary Protected Status from Somali Minnesotans, branding her ascent a “mess” that “destroyed our country.”

From these shadows, Ilhan’s wealth bloomed like a desert mirage—contradicting her socialist sermons on inequality. Elected on promises of taxing the rich, her 2019 net worth hovered near zero, saddled by student debt on her $174,000 congressional salary.

By May 2025, disclosures revealed a 3,500% surge: up to $30 million, funneled through Mynett’s ventures—a California winery (ESTCRU LLC, $1M-$5M) and a venture capital firm (Rose Lake Capital LLC, $5M-$25M).

Months earlier, she’d scoffed at millionaire rumors as “ridiculous,” yet here it was: opulent assets while railing against “billionaires.” Critics howl hypocrisy—how does a refugee firebrand amass this without the kickbacks Drazkowski alleges? Her memoir and speeches netted royalties, but the bulk traces to Mynett’s opaque empire, raising fresh IRS flags amid her district’s $1 billion welfare fraud scandal, where she hosted events at implicated venues and employed a convicted embezzler.

The Feeding Our Future scandal saw a nonprofit allegedly steal over $250 million in federal child nutrition funds during the pandemic, leading to charges against 78 people, mostly of Somali descent, and recent convictions like a 10-year sentence in November 2025. Omar’s Minnesota 5th District campaign received over $50,000 from individuals later charged, with critics pointing to events at a fraudster’s restaurant and payments to her husband’s firm. Her 2025 disclosure lists assets pushing her net worth between $6 million and $30 million, which she has defended amid community claims of being victims of oversight failures. No charges connect her directly to the fraud.

X Summary

Most damning is her fealty, sworn to America yet bent toward Somalia. In a May 2025 Minneapolis speech, captured on video, Ilhan declared: “I am here to protect the interests of Somalia from within the US system”—words that ignited calls for expulsion.

Earlier, in January 2024, she vowed to Somali expatriates: “The U.S. government will only do what Somalians in the U.S. tell them to do. They will do what we want and nothing else. They must follow our orders”—a clip Elon Musk branded “treason.”

Defenders cry mistranslation (she meant Somali-Muslim unity against Somaliland’s Ethiopia pact), but the intent chills: prioritizing Mogadishu’s chaos—plagued by terrorism, piracy, and civil war—over her oath to “bear true faith and allegiance” to the U.S.

Republicans like Tom Emmer demand ethics probes; Marjorie Taylor Greene pushes censure for “foreign agent” rhetoric.

Ilhan retorts she’s “as American as everyone else,” but her actions—lobbying against U.S. interests in the Horn of Africa, per Drazkowski’s files—betray the lie.

From Barre’s killing fields to Capitol Hill’s corridors, Ilhan Omar’s arc is no redemption tale—it’s a saga of evasion, enrichment, and divided loyalties. A colonel’s daughter who traded uniform for hijab, she lectures on justice while dodging accountability for frauds that mock the refuge America extended. As Trump warns, her “country is a mess,” yet she funnels its feuds into ours. History, as her family’s flight attests, catches up.

Guest Contributor

Self-Reliance Central publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of SRC. Reproduced with permission.