President Donald Trump again took aim at Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), this time suggesting she should be removed from the United States over long-standing allegations that she “supposedly” entered the country by marrying her brother to obtain immigration benefits.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said:
“Somalia, where you have a Congressman goes around telling everybody about our Constitution, yet she supposedly came into our country by marrying her brother. Well, if that’s true, she shouldn’t be a Congressman, and we should throw her the hell out of our country.”
Trump added that the U.S. does not need people arriving here and then “telling us what to do.”
The comments come as Omar and her Democratic allies continue aggressively defending Minnesota’s Somali community amid reports of widespread fraud involving taxpayer-funded healthcare programs. Trump previously moved to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somali nationals after billions in funds were reported missing.
Breitbart’s Warner Todd Huston reported that Omar has accused Trump of making “lawless threats” against Somalians — an accusation that fits her long pattern of attacking Trump while simultaneously championing her home country’s interests.
On Thanksgiving, Trump posted on Truth Social sharply criticizing both Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and Omar. In the post, Trump described Omar as constantly “wrapped in her swaddling hijab” and doing “nothing but hatefully” complaining about the United States. He also slammed Walz as “seriously retarded” and accused both officials of ignoring problems in Minnesota’s Somali community.
Trump said Omar “probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother,” adding that she continually trashes the country despite coming from what he called a “decadent, backward, and crime ridd[en] nation” lacking effective government, security forces, and basic institutions.
The Powerline blog — one of the earliest outlets to pursue the story — reported in 2020 that the Daily Mail published claims from Somali community leader Abdihaikm Osman Nur, who stated Omar indeed married her brother in 2009 and openly said she would “do what she had to do” to get him “papers” to stay in the U.S.
The blog also reported that Omar entered the United States in 1995 as a fraudulent member of the ‘Omar’ family — a separate Somali family granted asylum. According to the reporting, Omar, her sister Sahra, and her father Nur Said used the false Omar family identity to obtain asylum, while her other siblings received asylum in the United Kingdom under their real names.
Omar’s real name before entering the U.S., according to those reports, was Ilhan Nur Said Elmi. She later married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi — her biological brother, according to the allegations — in 2009. Their divorce was finalized in 2017.
Trump has repeatedly highlighted Somalia’s chronic instability, saying in a recent Truth Social post that the country suffers from a lack of central government, widespread poverty, hunger, terrorism, piracy, corruption, and persistent violence.
He also questioned why Omar, given these circumstances and the allegations surrounding her entry into the U.S., feels entitled to lecture the American government on “how to run America.”
