At the Republican midterm convention in Dallas on September 11, 2026, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told a conservative podcaster that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) married her brother in an immigration scheme, that a federal investigation is ongoing, and that deportation could follow.
“Something's going to happen, and this is an ongoing investigation,” Mullin said. “We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States. We know he lives now in London. We feel that... 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. But all of this we're investigating.” He added, “If you lied about certain things about your application. There's no expiration to that. If we can prove it, that you shouldn't have been here in the first place, we'll deport you.”
Mullin said the effort was not political: “Here's what I want to make sure we do: if we actually move a case forward, it's not a political case, it's an actual case, because they did things wrong.”
The claim he stated as known fact is not established. It began on a Somali community discussion forum and was picked up by a conservative blog whose author, asked in 2019, produced no substantive evidence. Snopes concluded the rumor was unfounded, finding “no public records or credible sources contradicting Omar's account of her past, nor any substantive evidence corroborating claims that Elmi is her brother or that their marriage was otherwise fraudulent.” In 2018 Omar showed a Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter her family's U.S. entry documents, which listed her father and showed her as the youngest of seven children, with no one by that name among them.
The fairest statement of the other side comes from the Star Tribune itself, which investigated and, as PolitiFact reported, “could neither conclusively confirm nor rebut the allegation.” Its editor said, “You see circumstantial evidence that begs for some kind of explanation from a member of Congress, but there's no smoking gun that she married her brother.”
So the claim is unsupported rather than disproven, and no charge has ever been brought. What is new is that a cabinet secretary with deportation authority asserted it as certain, said his department is investigating a sitting member of Congress, and tied it to removing her from the country. Omar, born in Somalia, was naturalized in 2000 at 17 and has denied the allegation for a decade: “Insinuations that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is my brother are absurd and offensive.”
Trump said in May that he believes Omar “married her brother, which is totally illegal,” and JD Vance said in March, “We actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America” (see Trump Says Reps. Omar and Tlaib Are 'LUNATICS' Who 'Look Like They Should Be Institutionalized,' Then Says 'Send Them Back').
A note on sourcing: coverage of Mullin's remarks came almost entirely from right-leaning outlets. The quotes are on video, and Mediaite carried the longest passage.