Expert: Ilhan Omar's Dad Was Never Refugee, Was Actually Commander in Military That Killed 200k People
In a new wrinkle to the immigration raid against Rep. Ilhan Omar, an expert scholar in the Somali civil war says that the congresswoman’s father was a military commander in a dictatorship that killed up to 200,000 people in the East African country.
Speaking to the New York Post, Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, an Oxford University historian and researcher, said that Omar’s father “misrepresented himself as a refugee” when he was in fact a perpetrator of the chaos in the country.
Omar’s home was raided on Monday as part of an investigation into whether she misrepresented herself as being a minor when she received U.S. citizenship through her father in 2000.
While public sources up until 2019 listed the Minnesota Democrat’s birth year as 1981, a viral video calling into question the route of her citizenship led Omar to say she was born in 1982, the New York Post reported Tuesday. Had she been born in 1981, she would have been 18 or 19 at the time of her naturalization, and thus ineligible for citizenship through her father as a minor.
Omar has maintained her birth records were destroyed when she left the war-torn country. The raid on Monday might have sought information about whether she continued to knowingly maintain a false birthdate, the New York Post reported.
The allegation about Omar’s father — while likely not legally actionable — throws a further wrench into a potential case against her citizenship.
The father was named Nur Omar Mohamed, also known as Nur Said Elmi Mohamed. He died in 2020.
While Omar has described her father as an “educator” who fled Somalia for the United States in 1995, Ingiriis said that he was “was a full colonel” in the military regime of Somalia dictator Siad Barre, the New York Post reported Tuesday.
That regime killed up to 200,000 people before Barre was deposed.
“Nur Said was a military officer who was loyal to the regime until the end,” Ingiriis told the newspaper.
“He was part and parcel of those who caused and created the mayhem they ‘fled’ to live comfortably in the United States.”
Ingiriis said Nur received training in either the former Soviet Union or Egypt.
He continued to hold a post in Barre’s bloodthirsty army until the strongman lost power. Before then, Nur had played a “significant role” in Somalia’s war with Ethiopia, a former fellow officer named Yusuf Ismail Faraton told a Minnesota outlet in 2020.
“He only fled when the dictatorship fell in 1991,” Ingiriis told the New York Post. “He was the beneficiary of the military regime and should not have been given asylum whatsoever.”
He added that Nur would have had to lie to American authorities about his time in Barre’s military to get asylum. U.S. law does not allow refugee status to be granted to “any person who ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”
Furthermore, Ingiriis told the newspaper, Nur “assisted the dictator to remain in power for so long” and “was protecting his career and his colonel position.”
“I think it is very wrong for the United States to host war criminals,” Ingiriis said.
“This creates a constant resentment and sadness among the real victims who were terrorized by the military regime under which Nur Said loyally served.”
Omar’s father came to the United States after escaping to Kenya.
Omar has maintained that the raid was conducted at the behest of President Donald Trump and meant to silence her.
“For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation,” she said.
“I will not be silenced.”
I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation.
I will not be silenced.
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) October 12, 2026
Trump, meanwhile, told reporters that “I’ve always found her to be totally crooked, personally, but [the raid] has nothing to do with me.”
“I think she’s a terrible person, just a complainer,” he added. “She comes from a country that is a non-country, and then she comes over here, and she complains about our Constitution. I think she’s a terrible person, but that’s really up to the DOJ. I have nothing to do with it.”
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