Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said federal investigators believe Rep. Ilhan Omar married her brother to bring him into the United States and warned that “something’s going to happen.” Mullin described the matter as an ongoing investigation that could extend beyond Omar’s disputed marriage and into her family’s immigration history. He also said investigators are examining whether fraud was committed when members of the family entered the country. No criminal charges have been publicly announced as of this writing.
Mullin delivered the remarks while speaking with commentator Benny Johnson at the 2026 Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas. Johnson asked the DHS chief directly what would happen to the Minnesota Democrat as federal authorities examined the allegations surrounding her marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Omar has repeatedly denied that Elmi is her brother, calling the insinuations “absurd and offensive.”
“Something’s going to happen, and this is an ongoing investigation,” Mullin responded. “We know that she married her brother to try to bring him to the United States. We know he lives now in London.” The remarks represented one of the clearest public statements yet from a senior administration official about the investigation.
Mullin said investigators suspect the alleged marriage scheme may be one part of a larger case. “We feel that this may—you know, 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,” he said, according to Trending Politics. “But all of this we’re investigating.”
The DHS chief stressed that authorities would need evidence of wrongdoing before moving forward against Omar. “Here’s what I want to make sure we do: If we actually move a case forward, it’s not a political case,” Mullin told Johnson. “It’s actually a case because they did things wrong.” He said the department’s decisions would be based on the evidence uncovered during the investigation rather than Omar’s political affiliation.
Mullin warned that alleged dishonesty during the immigration process could still produce consequences years later. “If you decided to break the law or lie on the information you gave the United States to be able to come into the United States through either asylum or because you were just wanting to seek a better life, but you didn’t tell us who you actually were—you lied about certain things about your application—those things, there’s no expiration to that,” he said. “If we can prove it that you shouldn’t have been here in the first place, we’ll deport you.”
Watch Mullin discuss the ongoing investigation here:
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Mullin said Omar’s case is part of a broader review involving other people suspected of committing fraud while entering the country. “We’re looking at a lot of cases that are very similar to this that we feel like there may have been fraud from the get-go,” he said. “But when we move forward, it’s not political. It’s because you chose to break the nation’s laws.”
Omar legally married Elmi, a British citizen, in February 2009 and obtained a divorce from him in December 2017. She has maintained that Elmi was a brief romantic partner and has rejected claims that the two were siblings. Omar became a naturalized American citizen in 2000, when she was 17 years old. She later legally married Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi in January 2018, divorced him, and married political consultant Tim Mynett.
“I don’t make the laws anymore. I’m in charge of enforcing laws, and I will not pick and choose which laws I’m going to enforce and which laws I’m not,” Mullin concluded. “I’m going to enforce all of them, regardless of who you are, regardless if you’re Omar or you’re some other individual in that community. We’re going to enforce it equally.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.