Rep. Ilhan Omar, 45, has denied allegations she fraudulently married second husband Ahmed Elmi, 41, while cautiously admitting she does not know whether they are related.
Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who came to the United States as a Somali refugee in 1995, has vehemently rejected claims the 2009 marriage was arranged for immigration purposes. When pressed directly on their possible sibling connection, she replied, “not to my knowledge,” according to statements reported this week.
The congresswoman’s family history spans multiple continents and has been complicated by lost or destroyed Somalian paperwork. Her mother reportedly died when Omar was young, and her family splintered between branches in the United Kingdom and the United States. Omar’s late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, also used the name Nur Said Elmi and served as a prominent military commander in the Somali dictatorship that millions fled.
Elmi’s exact parentage remains unclear, though he lived in London with Leila Nur Said, a Somali woman believed to be Omar’s sister who may have raised him. A 1997 UK marriage certificate for Leila obtained by The Post lists her father as Nur Said Elmi, a military officer from Somalia. Multiple sources have told The Post they believe that name refers to Omar’s father.
Omar’s father also went by Nur Said on Facebook, where his profile was linked to Leila’s account. She regularly left “hearts” on his photographs. Following his death at age 67 from COVID complications in June 2020, social media tributes poured in for “Nur Said Elmi,” with condolences directed to both Omar and Leila.
A motion filed Wednesday by the US District Attorney for the District of Columbia seeking to block the unsealing of a federal search warrant for Omar’s home referred to the congresswoman as “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar.”
Omar and Elmi legally married in the United States in 2009 and divorced in 2017. On their marriage application, both listed a Columbia Heights, Minneapolis property as their marital address. Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi, Omar’s previous partner, also used that same address for a business license.
Omar first applied for a marriage license with Hirsi in 2002, though she later stated, “we never finalized the application and thus were never legally married.” According to Omar, the pair separated in 2008, then reconciled around 2012, and finally married in 2018. They share three children born in 2003, 2005, and 2012.
While legally married to Elmi from 2009 to 2017, Omar had her third child with Hirsi. Omar claims she and Elmi separated in 2011 but that paperwork dragged on for years. The Post has previously reported joint tax filings between Omar and Hirsi in 2014 and 2015, during her legal marriage to Elmi, which were later corrected.
Elmi reportedly left the United States to return to the UK well before the 2017 divorce was finalized. Omar married Hirsi in January 2018. The following year, Elmi withdrew a marriage-based green-card application after US Citizenship and Immigration Services requested additional evidence about the marriage.
A Minneapolis-based Somali blogger said in 2020 that he knew Omar when both were growing up in Minnesota, and that she had introduced Elmi to Somali community members in the 2000s as her brother from London. “No one knew there had been a wedding [to Elmi] until the media turned up the marriage certificate years later,” he said at the time.
The blogger claimed Elmi had been ordered to come to the US from the UK by his father, who discovered he had been living what the blogger described as a decadent and immoral life in London. “People began noticing that Ilhan and [Hirsi] were often with a very effeminate young guy. He was very feminine in the way he dressed. He would wear light lipstick and pink clothes and very, very short shorts in the summer. People started whispering about him,” he claimed.
The relocation was intended as a form of “rehab,” according to the blogger, but after his marriage to Omar, Elmi returned to the UK and continued what was described as a “flamboyant” lifestyle.
Elmi has described himself as a “dirty dandy” on social media, where he regularly posted photographs of himself in garish outfits. He was also seen at upscale London cafes with male companions. He later pursued a doctorate at Bristol University starting in 2023, serving as a research assistant at the university’s School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies. His listed academic interests included “critically queer,” “decolonization,” “gender research group,” and the “center for black humanities.”
As of late 2025, The Post reported Elmi made an extended visit to the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. “So far, so fab…a month in JoBurg,” he captioned an Instagram post dated November 4. Elmi has never been romantically linked to any woman other than Omar.
President Trump has recently accused Omar and Elmi of being siblings, amplifying long-circulating conservative allegations against the congresswoman.