Report: Ilhan Omar’s journey to US on wooden boat from Africa

By WILLIS OKECH IN MOMBASA, KENYA and NICK FAGGE IN LONDON

Published: 14:32 EDT, 21 October 2026 | Updated: 14:32 EDT, 21 October 2026

Ilhan Omar’s family risked a four-day sea voyage that killed scores of others to escape Somalia’s civil war on the first leg of their journey to America, the Daily Mail can reveal, as her immigration story comes under renewed scrutiny.

Omar, who represents Minnesota’s 5th District, fled Somalia with her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, when she was around eight years old, boarding a traditional wooden fishing dhow to escape a violent militia as Somalia descended into civil war in 1991.

Omar’s mother, Fadhuma Abukar Haji Hussein, had died when she was two, leaving her father and grandfather to raise her as the youngest of seven children. Omar has said the family escaped together after their compound came under attack.

The family arrived in the port of Malindi, in northern Kenya, together with dozens of other refugees after a journey along the Horn of Africa in which boats sank, claiming more than 100 lives.

Omar’s father, a former army officer, was being pursued by Hawiye militiamen who had toppled Siad Barre, a dictator whose forces killed tens of thousands of civilians in the late 1980s.

Now, a former Kenyan engineer has told the Daily Mail how Omar’s family had been forced to escape as the Somali capital of Mogadishu collapsed into anarchy.

‘In one boat 120 people drowned. Nobody was rescued,’ said Nurien Hatimy, who helped build the refugee camp where the family was housed.

Omar’s early life and immigration history are at the center of a federal criminal probe, with Department of Homeland Security investigators examining whether her late father lied or omitted information on immigration forms.

Rep. Ilhan Omar has claimed she obtained US citizenship through her Somali-born father, Nur Omar Mohamed, who died in 2020, though no records of her or her father’s naturalization have been found.

Ilhan Omar (center) as a young girl. At the center of the immigration probe is Omar’s birth year, which has appeared as both 1981 and 1982 in official records. Her staff had it changed from 1981 to 1982 on her Minnesota legislature biography in May 2019.

Omar, who represents the Minnesota’s 5th District, fled Somalia with her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, in a traditional wooden fishing dhow (file photo) to flee capture by a violent militia as Somalia descended into civil war in 1991.

The probe hinges on Omar’s birth year, which has appeared as both 1981 and 1982 in official records. Her staff had it changed from 1981 to 1982 on her Minnesota legislature biography in May 2019.

The year is significant because Omar says she became a citizen in 2000 at 17 through her father’s naturalization, a route closed to anyone 18 or over.

There are also unresolved questions over her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen alleged to be her brother, which she denies.

Federal agents raided her home in Washington DC last week, seizing her phone and passport.

Omar called it ‘an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.’

In a fundraising video on Tuesday night, two weeks before the November 3 midterms, she told followers: ‘We’re not going to be intimidated. We’re not going to be silenced.’

Trump has denied any role. ‘I think she’s a terrible person, but that’s really up to the DOJ. I have nothing to do with it,’ he told reporters at the White House.

Hatimy told the Daily Mail that as Mogadishu fell to rebels, members of Omar’s Daroodi tribe were forced to risk the high seas because all flights out of the capital had been grounded.

Two years later, Mogadishu became the scene of the battle immortalized in the movie Black Hawk Down, in which 18 American soldiers were killed fighting militiamen loyal to warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

Hatimy was directly involved with the construction of the Utange refugee camp outside Mombasa, where he took a direct interest in the welfare of the occupants – including Omar’s family.

They are believed to have boarded a dhow, the sort of traditional vessel that has sailed the Red Sea for hundreds of years, at the Somali port of Barawa in early 1991.

Hatimy explained: ‘Some of the refugees from Barawa, including members of the Daroodi tribe, fled to Kenya by road and by sea as there were no airlines operating in that country to help anybody escape the civil war.

‘Unluckily, some boats capsized in the sea during the four-day journey, leaving most of passengers drowned … This was the case with many boats at the height of the time great exodus from Somalia.’

Hatimy, who is a part of an ethnic Somali community in Kenya, recalled how Ilhan’s father, Nur Omar Mohamed, and his family were lucky to have survived the journey and that their boat docked at the Indian Ocean port of Malindi.

Former Kenyan engineer, Nurien Hatimy has told the Daily Mail how Omar’s family had been forced to escape from the Somali capital Mogadishu collapsed into anarchy (Source: Obtained by the Daily Mail).

Somali refugees walk at the new Ifo-extension in Dadaab, Kenya, in 2011. Omar and her family were finally settled at the huge Dadaab refugee complex in the arid north of the country, where more than 400,000 mostly Somali refugees were held.

A young Somali refugee walks beside a makeshift shelter at the Dadaab refugee camp in north eastern Kenya, on April 3, 2011.

Omar’s father Nur Omar Mohamed (center) at her swearing in ceremony with Speaker Nancy Pelosi in January 2019.

Ilhan Omar in her youth. Nurien Hatimy said that he could not recall how many children Nur Omar Mohamed had with him, but he remembered a young girl of about eight years old who used to follow him during the distribution of food at the camp.

The family were initially housed at the small St Anne transit camp in Mombasa and then moved to the bigger Utange camp outside the city.

Omar and her family were finally settled at the huge Dadaab refugee complex in the arid north of the country, where more than 400,000 mostly Somali refugees were held.

Hatimy said that he could not recall how many children Nur Omar Mohamed had with him, but he remembered a young girl of about eight years old who used to follow him during the distribution of food at the camp.

‘I cannot recall the name of any child of Nur Omar Mohamed, but what I still remember is that he was one of the former ruling class who had taken refuge in Kenya and had to run away from the Hawiye tribe militia which had seized power,’ Hatimy said.

As part of an ethnic Somali community, Hatimy worked closely with the Mombasa governor Shariff Nassir to welcome refugees fleeing the civil war, arriving at the ancient city of Mombasa and other ports by fishing dhows.

Hatimy used his engineering skills to plan and construct the Utange Refugee Camp in Mombasa for Somali refugees in 1991.

He said that, like other refugees who made their way to other countries, Omar should count herself lucky that their boats managed to reach Kenya, because many did not survive the journey.

Nur Omar Mohamed was among hundreds of thousands of refugees who were given identity cards and taken to the sprawling Dadaab camp with his children, where a US agent working with the United Nations offered him and his family sanctuary.

Omar married Ahmed Hirsi (pictured together) in 2002 in a religious ceremony that was not recognized by law. In 2019, she spent months denying she had split from him after the Daily Mail revealed she was having an affair with a campaign aide. Omar finally filed for divorce from Hirsi in 2019.

Omar left her first husband so she could marry Ahmed Elmi in 2009. Omar has been accused of going into that marriage solely to allow Elmi – a British citizen – to enter the US. Political enemies have long noted Elmi is her brother. Source: Ahmed Nur Said Elmi/Facebook.

Ilhan Omar with her ex-husband Ahmed Hirsi and their three children.

The application for marriage filled in by Ilhan Omar and Ahmed Elmi. The ceremony in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, was officiated by a Christian minister.

The family arrived in the US in March 1995, when Omar was 12, settling first in Arlington, Virginia, before moving to the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis in 1997.

Her father drove a taxi and later worked for the US Postal Service.

Omar has described him as an educator, but Somali historian Mohamed Haji Ingiriis has described him as ‘a full colonel in Siad Barre’s military regime.’

He died of Covid complications in June 2020 at the age of 67.

Omar has become one of Trump’s most vocal critics, particularly over the president’s border crackdown which brought bloodshed to her home city Minneapolis earlier this year when two anti-ICE protesters were killed by federal agents.

It is not the first time his government has examined her immigration history. Homeland Security Investigations looked into Omar in 2019 and found insufficient evidence of wrongdoing, a former official said last week.

Agents also seized DNA evidence in last week’s raid, according to Fox News, and more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas were issued, including to her older sister, Sahra Noor.

The DNA seizure puts fresh focus on the long-running claim that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, whom Omar married in 2009, is in fact her brother.

Omar’s Washington, DC, home was raided by federal authorities on October 12.

More than a dozen grand jury subpoenas were issued around the raid on Omar’s DC home, including to some of her relatives.

Ilhan Omar and her husband Tim Mynett at a White House garden party.

Elmi, who had been living in Britain, married Omar in 2009, a year after she says she split from Ahmed Hirsi, the father of her three children, whom she had wed in a religious ceremony in 2002.

Sources told the Daily Mail that marriage was purely to allow Elmi to attend North Dakota State University, Omar’s alma mater. Omar says they split in 2011, but they did not divorce until 2017.

Omar reconciled with Hirsi in 2011 and had a third child with him in 2012, while still legally married to Elmi. She married Hirsi in a civil ceremony in January 2018, a month after divorcing Elmi.

They divorced in 2019 after Hirsi found her lounging in pajamas with political consultant Tim Mynett at her Washington DC apartment.

Mynett, who she married in 2020, is also under scrutiny over his businesses. Omar’s disclosures valued his stakes in a winery and a venture capital firm at no more than $51,000 combined for 2023, then up to $30 million for 2024.

She later amended the filing to give both no net value, blaming an accounting error, but US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office is investigating the disclosures and the House Oversight Committee is examining the firms.

Abdihakim Osman Nur, a Minneapolis community leader, told the Daily Mail in 2020 that Omar and Hirsi had introduced Elmi to him as her brother. ‘She said she needed to get papers for her brother to go to school,’ Nur said.

Despite both being Muslim, the couple were married by a Christian minister. ‘If they had gone to an imam he would have almost certainly have known if they were related,’ one Somali leader in Minnesota said.

Omar barely mentioned Elmi in her 2020 memoir, describing him as a man ‘whom I spent so little time with that I wouldn’t even make him a footnote in my story.’ He is now said to be back living in London.

‘We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States,’ Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said on a podcast in September. No evidence for that claim has been made public.

Omar, who denies wrongdoing and has not been charged, has called the claim ‘absurd and offensive.’