Somali community leader in Minn says Ilham Omar married brother so he could get student loans: report

A Somali community leader in Minnesota has come forward to say that Rep Ilhan Omar of Minnesota did in fact marry her brother, Ahmed Elmi. The leader said that Omar did so because he "needed to get papers for her brother to go to school." Elmi was Omar’s second husband and they were married by a Christian pastor. In Somali culture, only her first marriage, which took place in a mosque, was counted as legitimate.

Abdihakim Osman, a friend of Omar’s and the person behind a Facebook blog that comments on Somali issues, told the Daily Mail that, "No one knew there had been a wedding until the media turned up the marriage certificate years later." 

Omar married her first husband, Hirsi, in a 2002 Muslim ceremony that was not registered with the state. They welcomed their first child, Isra, the following year, and a second child after that. Osman said that Elmi appeared in Minneapolis in the late 2000s. The Daily Mail said that Osman, who spoke in Somali and used an nterpreter, referred to Hirsi by his nickname, "Southside," throughout the interview.

"People began noticing that Ilhan and Southside (Hirsi) were often with a very effeminate young guy," said Osman. "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. [Hirsi] and Ilhan both told me it was Ilhan's brother and he had been living in London but he was mixing with what were seen as bad influences that the family did not like. So they sent him to Minneapolis as 'rehab.'"

He continued, "When [Hirsi] and Ilhan got married, a lot of people were invited. It was a big Islamic wedding uniting two large clans in the Minneapolis community. I would say there were 100-150 people there." However, "when she married Elmi, no one even knew about it."

A wedding license showed that the two married on February 12, 2009 at a Hennepin County office located outside of Minneapolis. The two lived at an address in Columbia Heights before moving to Fargo, ND where they both attended North Dakota State. They were married by Christian minister Wilecia Harris.

Omar has said that she and Hirsi separated in 2008. She also said that after that date the two were still together as husband and wife. "She said she needed to get papers for her brother to go to school. We all thought she was just getting papers together to allow him to stay in this country. Once she had the papers they could apply for student loans. They both moved to North Dakota to go to school but she was still married to [Hirsi]. In the Somali way, the only marriage that mattered was the one in the mosque."

Osman continued, "Ilhan came back to Minneapolis all the time to see her family, but her brother didn’t come with her." He believes Omar and Elmi got married by someone outside the Somali community because an imam would have known they were related and denied the marriage. 

Omar and Elmi divorced in 2017, after which she remarried Hirsi in a civil ceremony in 2018. Osman told the outlet that this was not a marriage, and said if herself and Hirsi that "they never parted."

Hirsi and Omar divorced in November of 2025 after it was revealed that Omar was reportedly having an affair with Tim Mynett, a married father of one and her chief fundraiser. Hirsi married pediatric nurse Ladan Ahmed 37 days after the two divorced. Myett and his wife divorced in December. Omar married Mynett.

Osman, who came to the US in 2004, said he got to know Hirsi well during his first few years in Minneapolis, with the two meeting when Hirsi was working in a barber shop. They regularly ate at a local restaurant together, and Osman occasionally helped Hirsi with his defunct hookah business.