BS BULLETIN:
- Ann Coulter is challenging the familiar political narrative surrounding Rep. Ilhan Omar’s arrival in America as a Somali refugee.
- Omar’s father has been identified in reporting as a colonel in the Somali National Army, working for a brutal murderous dictator, before the family fled after the collapse of Siad Barre’s government.
- There is no established evidence that Omar’s father personally participated in the Barre regime’s later atrocities.
Ann Coulter has found a new way into one of Washington’s oldest arguments about Rep. Ilhan Omar: go back to the beginning.
Ilhan Omar’s father served in Siad Barre’s Marxist regime. Sometimes people are refugees because they persecuted others, not because they were persecuted. Now we’re supposed to listen to her lecture us about America. pic.twitter.com/b124gIlztf
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) September 21, 2026
In a new clip from her Unsafe program, Coulter zeroed in on Omar’s biography as a refugee from Somalia and the military background of her father.
“Sometimes people are refugees because they persecuted others, not because they were persecuted,” Coulter argued.
That is Coulter’s broader contention — but the documented history requires a little more care.
Omar’s father, Nur Omar Mohamed, has been identified in reporting as a colonel in the Somali National Army who commanded a regiment during the 1977–78 Ogaden War against Ethiopia.
Omar has also described her father as an educator.
What the available record does not establish is that Mohamed personally participated in the atrocities later committed by forces associated with dictator Mohamed Siad Barre’s government.
Omar was a child when Somalia descended into civil war and Barre’s government collapsed in 1991. Her family fled the country and spent approximately four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before resettling in the United States in 1995.
The family eventually moved to Minnesota, where Omar entered politics and ultimately became the first Somali-American elected to Congress.
Coulter’s clip nevertheless lands at a particularly combustible moment.
Omar last week introduced the Make ICE Pay Act, legislation that would redirect nearly $140 billion allocated to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Omar wants the money instead directed toward communities she says were harmed by federal immigration enforcement operations.
That has again put Omar’s own refugee story alongside her criticism of American immigration enforcement — exactly the contrast Coulter is trying to exploit.
DBS WIRE SOURCES:
- Twitchy — Coulter targets Omar’s refugee story
- Ann Coulter’s Unsafe — September archive
- Star Tribune — Omar recounts family’s life in Somalia and refugee experience
- Rep. Ilhan Omar — Make ICE Pay Act announcement
- New York Post — Omar’s Make ICE Pay Act
