There’s an old adage, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” It recognizes the universal tactic for doing well away from home. Rep. Ilhan Omar is from Somalia. This we know. Just about all of the other details of her journey to this point are murky at best. The other thing we know is Omar probably would not do in Rome what the Romans do.
The official story is that she was born in Mogadishu in 1982. After civil war erupted in her homeland, her family fled to Kenya in the early 1990s. They stayed in a refugee camp in that country for a few years, and then in 1995, the family resettled to the U.S. If you believe Omar, she said she came to the U.S. in 1995 at the age of 12.
Her family landed in Arlington, Va., and then bounced to Minneapolis. Records state she became a U.S. citizen in 2000 at the age of 17 or 18.
If you’ve heard stories about Omar possibly marrying a cousin or a brother in order to become a U.S. citizen, I’ve got nothing definitive for you here, and that’s the point. The level of obfuscation itself around much of Omar’s background is enough to make one curious.
The rumors are that she married her biological brother or cousin for immigration purposes. Politifact (sourcing the AP and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune) has refuted the claims. Are those reports credible, or are they just running cover for one of their favorite Democrat politicians?
Business Insider (BI) published its own comprehensive review of the situation and found discrepancies in Omar’s story, but could not definitively prove that the rumors are accurate.
More to the point, BI found that Omar married her first husband, Ahmed Hirsi, in an Islamic faith ceremony in 2002, “but the couple did not obtain a legal marriage certificate.” The couple “split in 2008, also in a faith-based, not legal, proceeding.”
BI reports that Omar legally married her second husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, in 2009. He’s the one most of the rumors center on. According to reports, they separated but did not divorce in 2011. While still legally married to Elmi, Omar reunited in 2012 with her first husband, Hirsi. In 2017, Omar got divorced from Elmi and legally married her first husband, Hirsi, in 2018.
Ain’t love grand? You may be surprised to know that true love did not survive, and Omar filed for divorce from Hirsi in 2019.
Given Omar’s regular public rants against the country that took her in, where she’s lived most of her life, where her children were born, and which employs her, you’d think she’d, you know, like it. It’s impossible to know what goes on in her mind and her heart, if she has one, but it does appear Omar really does like getting married. She does it a lot.
Less than a year after divorcing Hirsi for a second time, she married U.S. political consultant Tim Mynett in March 2020. We’ll stop there on the Omar love saga that’s sure to be a Hallmark movie someday because this isn’t TMZ.
Our focus is on the larger issue of immigration in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, a large part of which is in Omar’s 5th Congressional District, and what a mess it’s become. Omar’s story, in fact, provides the perfect backdrop to it. But things could be changing.
Yesterday, a group of federal agencies announced the results of a large-scale immigration fraud investigation centered on Minneapolis-St. Paul. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), coordinated with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the FBI, to conduct “Operation Twin Shield,” which they described in a statement as “the first of its kind targeted surge of fraud detection and deterrence activities across Minneapolis-St. Paul and surrounding areas.”
According to the feds, they “discovered suspected fraud in 275 cases in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.”
The operation focused on more than 1,000 cases that had fraud or ineligibility indicators. Applications that were investigated include: marriage and family-based petitions, employment authorizations, and certain parole-related requests.
Agents conducted over 900 site visits and in-person interviews, and found evidence of fraud, non-compliance, or public safety or national security concerns in 275 cases. This represents 44 percent or almost half of the cases interviewed.
USCIS said it “uncovered many lies” and cited one example where an individual admitted to “fabricating a death certificate from Kenya for $100 to falsely claim the termination of a marriage — the spouse in question is alive, residing in Minneapolis, and is the mother of five of his children.”
In a separate instance, the individual was the son of a suspected terrorist who overstayed his visa. Investigators found that the suspect had previously engaged in marriage fraud, which led to a denial of immigration benefits.
In a third case, the suspect admitted to investigators that she committed marriage fraud "hours after swearing that her marriage was bona fide.” And in a fourth case, an illegal immigrant engaged in marriage fraud “by taking advantage of an elderly U.S. citizen spouse, including subjecting the spouse to elder abuse and exploitation.”
“USCIS is declaring an all-out war on immigration fraud. We will relentlessly pursue everyone involved in undermining the integrity of our immigration system and laws. With help from ICE and the FBI, USCIS’ Operation Twin Shield was a tremendous success—hundreds of bad actors will be held accountable,” said USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow.
If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, you’re wondering if any of those investigators have started to look into other locations like Dearborn, Mich., or if they would take another look at Omar’s story. We can only hope.
One more thing: If you want to see the Democrats go down to defeat in next year’s midterms and beyond, now is the time to join the battle to Make America Great Again. Without you, America can lose. We need your help to succeed!
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