Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told a conservative audience Thursday that federal investigators are actively probing allegations about Rep. Ilhan Omar’s immigration history, and warned that legal consequences could follow.
Mullin made those remarks during an appearance with commentator Benny Johnson at the 2026 Republican Midterm Convention. When Johnson raised the longstanding allegation that Omar married a man named Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, whom critics have long claimed is her biological brother, in order to secure his immigration status, Mullin did not hedge.
“Something’s going to happen,” he said.
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He went further still, stating that investigators believe the marriage was part of a deliberate immigration scheme. “We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States,” Mullin said.
That allegation has circulated for years without ever being publicly proven. Omar has denied it repeatedly and forcefully. As originally reported, the Minnesota Democrat called the claims “absolutely false and ridiculous” in 2020 and said that “insinuations that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is my brother are absurd and offensive.”
Mullin indicated the scope of the investigation extends beyond the marriage allegation itself. Federal authorities, he said, are also examining the broader immigration history of Omar’s family.
“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 said.
The DHS secretary was careful to frame any potential action as evidence-based rather than politically motivated. “If we actually move a case forward, it’s not a political case. It’s actually a case because they did things wrong,” Mullin said.
He also addressed the question of timing, arguing that immigration fraud carries no statute of limitations when false information was provided to the federal government.
“If you decided to break the law or lie on the information you gave the United States, but you didn’t tell us who you actually were, there’s no expiration to that,” Mullin said. “If we can prove that you shouldn’t have been here in the first place, we’ll deport you.”
Omar’s office did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News, which first reported Mullin’s remarks.
The allegations against the Minnesota congresswoman have persisted in conservative media circles for nearly a decade. To date, no charges have been filed and no public evidence has been presented to substantiate the claims. Omar has consistently denied that Elmi is her brother, and the matter remains, for now, an open investigation according to the nation’s top homeland security official.
