Trump’s DHS chief drops update on Ilhan Omar deportation: ‘We know that she married her brother’

BS BULLETIN:

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says federal authorities are conducting an “ongoing investigation” involving Rep. Ilhan Omar and possible immigration fraud.
Mullin flatly asserted that Omar married her brother to help bring him into the United States and said investigators are examining whether there was additional wrongdoing involving her family’s migration.

One of the most explosive allegations surrounding Rep. Ilhan Omar is suddenly back — and this time it’s coming from the man running the Department of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says there is an “ongoing investigation” into the Minnesota Democrat and possible immigration fraud.

And Mullin didn’t couch his allegation in much uncertainty.

“We know that she married her brother to try to bring him to the United States,” Mullin told conservative commentator Benny Johnson during an interview at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas.

“We know he lives now in London,” Mullin added, referring to Omar’s former husband.

But Mullin suggested investigators are looking considerably beyond Omar’s marriage history. “There may be more to this,” he said, pointing to “the whole family migration” and possible illegal activity surrounding how members of Omar’s family originally came to the United States.

Mullin stressed that authorities are still investigating and said he wants any potential case to be based on evidence rather than politics. “If we actually move a case forward, it’s not a political case, it’s an actual case, because they did things wrong,” he said.

Then came the potential consequence. Deportation.

Mullin said that if investigators can prove someone lied or supplied false information during the immigration process, the passage of time wouldn’t necessarily protect that person.

“If we can prove it — that you shouldn’t have been here in the first place — we’ll deport you,” Mullin said.

Omar was born in Somalia, came to the United States as a refugee and became a naturalized American citizen in 2000 at age 17. The allegation involving her former husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, has followed Omar for roughly a decade.

Omar legally married Elmi in 2009. Critics have long alleged that Elmi was actually her brother and that the marriage was designed to provide him with an immigration benefit.

Omar has vehemently denied that allegation.

And despite years of reporting and political accusations, it has never been conclusively established publicly that Elmi is Omar’s biological brother.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune investigated Omar’s marriage history extensively in 2019 and reported that it could “neither conclusively confirm nor rebut” the sibling allegation.

PolitiFact reached essentially the same conclusion, noting that reporters uncovered unusual circumstances and unanswered questions but no “smoking gun” establishing that Omar married her brother.

There have been documented irregularities elsewhere in Omar’s marital history.

Omar and Ahmed Hirsi, the father of her children, had a religious marriage but weren’t legally married during much of their relationship. Omar legally married Elmi in 2009, religiously divorced him in 2011 but remained legally married to him for several more years.

Omar and Hirsi also filed joint tax returns in 2014 and 2015 while Omar was still legally married to Elmi, according to previous reporting.

None of that, however, establishes that Elmi was her brother. That’s what makes Mullin’s new comments so significant. This isn’t simply another politician asking questions about a decade-old rumor.

The secretary overseeing the nation’s immigration enforcement apparatus says his department is actively investigating — and he’s publicly asserting that investigators already “know” the central allegation is true.

Whether federal investigators can actually prove that is another matter entirely. And Mullin himself made clear that proof is what would ultimately matter.

MY QUICK TAKE

For years this story has lived in political purgatory:

Omar says it’s nonsense. Her critics say the evidence is staring everyone in the face. Reporters dig through marriage licenses, tax returns and old addresses and eventually come back with: We still can’t prove it.

Now the Homeland Security secretary just walked into the room and said, essentially: We know. That’s a very different ballgame. But there’s still one enormously important word here: prove.

If DHS has evidence that previous reporters and investigators couldn’t find, let’s see it.

Because if the government is contemplating something as extraordinary as stripping a sitting member of Congress of citizenship and deporting her, “everybody knows” isn’t going to cut it.

Receipts, please.

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