Ilhan Omar

Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (born 4 October 1982) is an American Democratic politician serving since 2019 as U.S. representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district. She is the first Somali American in the United States Congress and the first woman of color to represent Minnesota there, and with Rashida Tlaib one of the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress. ^{1 2}

Her life story — from a refugee camp to Congress — is the subject of her 2020 memoir This Is What America Looks Like. ¹

Omar was born in Mogadishu and spent her early years in Baidoa, southern Somalia, the youngest of seven siblings. Her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, was a colonel in the Somali Army under Siad Barre and a teacher trainer; her mother, Fadhuma Abukar Haji Hussein, died when Omar was two, and she was raised by her father and her grandfather, the director of Somalia's National Marine Transport. ¹

The English article records that her father and grandfather were moderate Sunni Muslims opposed to the rigid Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, and that her grandfather emphasised the importance of democracy — at fourteen she accompanied him to caucus meetings as his interpreter. ¹ That is her family's background, not an attestation of her own school; the Arabic article and Wikidata give her religion as Islam without a school. ^{3 4}

The family fled the Somali Civil War and spent four years in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, then secured asylum and arrived in New York in 1995, living for a time in Arlington, Virginia, before settling in Minneapolis, where her father worked as a taxi driver and later for the post office. ^{1 3} She has spoken of school bullying over her hijab and Somali appearance, and she became a U.S. citizen in 2000 at the age of seventeen. ¹

She graduated from Thomas Edison High School in 2001 and from North Dakota State University in 2011 with a bachelor's degree in political science and international studies, and was a policy fellow at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs. ¹

Omar worked as a community nutrition educator at the University of Minnesota (2006–2009), managed Kari Dziedzic's 2012 re-election campaign for the Minnesota Senate, served as a child nutrition outreach coordinator at the Minnesota Department of Education (2012–2013), then as senior policy aide to Minneapolis council member Andrew Johnson (2013–2015), and by 2015 was Director of Policy Initiatives of the Women Organizing Women Network. ¹

In February 2014, during a contentious precinct caucus, she was attacked by five people and injured, as MinnPost reported and the article records. ^{1 3}

In 2016 Omar won the Democratic–Farmer–Labor primary in District 60B against Mohamud Noor and the incumbent Phyllis Kahn, and won the general election after her Republican opponent Abdimalik Askar withdrew, becoming the first Somali-American legislator in the United States. Her term began on 3 January 2017; she was an assistant minority leader and authored 38 bills in the 2017–2018 session. ^{1 2}

In 2018, after Keith Ellison announced he would not seek re-election, Omar ran for the 5th district, won the general election with 78.0% of the vote — the largest percentage won by any female candidate for the U.S. House in state history — and was sworn in on a copy of the Quran owned by her grandfather. ¹

She was re-elected in 2020 with 64.3%, in 2022 after a close primary she won 50.3% to Don Samuels's 48.2%, and won the 2024 primary with 56%. ¹

Omar is deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and has advocated a $15 minimum wage, universal healthcare, student loan debt forgiveness, protection of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ^{1 3}

This section presents differing views as reported in the sources; it is not the museum's verdict on them.

Israel and the lobbies: Omar is a frequent critic of Israel: she supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and has denounced Israel's settlement policies and military campaigns in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as the influence of pro-Israel lobbies in U.S. politics. ^{1 3} In 2012 she had written that Israel had "hypnotized the world"; in 2019, after a commentary by Bari Weiss, she apologised for not "disavowing the anti-Semitic trope I unknowingly used", as the article records. ¹ In February 2019 she replied to a critic with a lyric from "It's All About the Benjamins", alluding to $100 bills; politicians of both parties accused her of using an antisemitic trope about Jews and money, and she apologised the next day, saying she was "grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes", while reaffirming her criticism of lobbyists' role in politics. ¹ In March 2019 Democratic leaders criticised remarks they read as imputing dual loyalty to supporters of Israel; she reaffirmed her position and did not apologise. ¹ In February 2023 the Republican-controlled House voted to remove her from the Foreign Affairs Committee, saying her comments about Israel showed she could not be "an objective decision-maker". ¹

Trump and "the Squad": In July 2019 President Donald Trump tweeted that the progressive congresswomen known as "the Squad" — most of them born in the United States — should "go back" to the places they came from. Omar replied that Trump was "stoking white nationalism"; the House voted 240–187 to condemn his comments as racist, and a rally crowd chanted "send her back". ^{3 1} The sources record that she has received several death threats and that opponents, including Trump, have made derogatory comments about her background. ¹

Campaign finance and her marriages: Minnesota campaign finance officials ruled in June 2019 that Omar had to repay $3,500 spent on out-of-state travel and tax filing in violation of state law, plus a $500 fine; the investigation also found that in 2014 and 2015 she had jointly filed taxes with a man she was not then legally married to, a filing her attorney and accountants corrected in 2016; her campaign said all her tax filings were fully compliant. ¹ Her marriages became the subject of allegations by political opponents — repeated by Trump — that her 2009 husband Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was her brother; the sources record the documented sequence: a faith-based divorce from Elmi she dates to 2011 and a legal divorce in 2017, a legal marriage to Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi in 2018 and divorce in 2019, and her marriage to Tim Mynett in 2020. ^{1 3}

Her supporters regard her as a voice for refugees, immigrants and Muslims at the highest level of American politics; Roll Call called her a "progressive rising star" in 2018. ¹

In 2020 HarperCollins published her memoir This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman, written with Rebecca Paley (Dey Street Books). ¹

Omar has three children, including the climate activist Isra Hirsi, and lives in Minneapolis. ^{1 3} The museum publishes no family detail beyond what understanding her public work requires.

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.
• The sources conflict on her birth year: the English article, the Arabic infobox and Wikidata give 1982; the Arabic narrative and the Urdu article give 1981. The record follows 1982 and records the conflict.
• Later translations and edits of this article require periodic review with clear update dates.