Ilhan Omar

Ilhan Omar (born October 4, 1982, Mogadishu, Somalia) is an American policy analyst, organizer, public speaker, advocate, and politician who began representing Minnesota’s 5th congressional district, which includes Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs, in 2019. Upon her inauguration to the U.S. House of Representatives, she became the first African refugee and one of the first two Muslim American women to be elected to Congress and the first woman of color to represent Minnesota. In 2024 Omar comfortably won reelection against Republican challenger Dalia Al-Aqidi.

Early life and education

Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, the youngest of seven children. Her mother died when Omar was two years old, and she was raised by her father and grandfather. In 1991 the start of the Somalian Civil War upended their lives, forcing the family to flee to a refugee camp in Kenya when Omar was eight years old. They lived there for four years until the United States granted Omar and her family asylum in 1995. They settled in Arlington, Virginia, where Omar and her sisters learned English by watching television programs. In 1997 the family relocated to Minneapolis, living in the neighborhood of Cedar-Riverside, the home of many Somali immigrants. There she attended Thomas Edison High School and accompanied her grandfather as his interpreter so he could participate in local politics. Omar became a U.S. citizen at the age of 17 in 2000.

Although Omar was interested in politics as a teenager, her path to becoming a member of the U.S. House of Representatives was, as she wrote in her memoir, This Is What America Looks Like (2020): “curvy and bumpy and painful.” After graduating high school in 2001, Omar wed her longtime boyfriend, Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi, in a religious ceremony that was not legally binding. That same year she enrolled in a two-year program to receive an associate’s degree in accounting but struggled to complete her courses after giving birth to a daughter, Isra Hirsi, in 2003. Omar switched to business administration and graduated in 2005, the same year her son Adnan Hirsi was born. She took on a role as an instructor for a health and nutrition program for underserved communities via the University of Minnesota’s extension department.

By 2008, however, Omar had what she later described as an “early midlife crisis.” She wrote:

I was one of countless Americans caught in a deep existential crisis brought on in part by the huge structural flaws revealed by the financial crisis. The realization that my two-year degree, which I had fought mightily to earn, was as good as worthless in an economy where even elites were struggling left me disillusioned. Meanwhile I had two children under five who needed so much. I felt like I was drowning.

Omar and Hirsi utilized Islamic procedure to dissolve their marriage, and she soon eloped with a friend, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. She enrolled in North Dakota State University in Fargo, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in nutrition. By 2012 Omar had graduated (2011) with a degree in political science and international studies, left Elmi, reconciled with Hirsi, and had her third child, daughter Ilwad Hirsi. Omar legally married Hirsi in 2018, but they divorced the following year. In 2020 she married Tim Mynett, a political consultant who had worked with Omar’s campaigns.

Entering politics

Upon Omar’s return to Minneapolis in 2012, she started a job as a nutrition specialist for the Minnesota department of nutrition, and she began volunteering for political campaigns. She gained recognition in local politics for her work on the 2012 “Vote No Twice” campaigns, which sought to defeat two ballot measures introduced by the Minnesota state legislature: one requiring photo identification for voters and another to define marriage as between one woman and one man. After the success of those campaigns, Omar worked on Minneapolis City Councilman Andrew Johnson’s successful 2013 bid for an open seat and became his senior policy aide in 2014.

Are you a student?

Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

Subscribe

Minnesota legislature

By 2016 Omar had decided to run for a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives, and her boundary-breaking campaign was chronicled in the documentary Time for Ilhan. She defeated the 44-year incumbent in the Democratic primary to become the first Somali American woman to serve in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Soon after winning, however, Omar confronted an onslaught of unfounded allegations spread by conservative websites and online forums. Among the most malicious rumors was the unsubstantiated assertion that Elmi was her brother, whom she had married to facilitate his immigration to the United States. Credible news organizations assiduously fact-checked these claims and found no evidence to support them.

U.S. House of Representatives

In 2018 Omar was in her second year in the Minnesota legislature when then U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison informed her that he would be running for the office of Minnesota attorney general, vacating his seat representing Minnesota’s 5th congressional district. Omar’s bid for the open seat was successful, and she was sworn in to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2019. She was part of a wave of progressive and left-leaning candidates that took office that year, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan—a group which the media took to calling “the Squad.” In subsequent years, other politically aligned members of the House—namely, Jamaal Bowman of Missouri, Cori Bush of Missouri, Greg Casar of Texas, and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania—joined the Squad.

Omar’s election to Congress led to the repeal of a 181-year-old ban on head coverings on the House floor, allowing her to don her hijab while performing her duties. As a lawmaker, Omar prioritized investing in education, eliminating student debt, ensuring a living wage, establishing a just immigration system, Medicare for All, and combating the threats posed by climate change. She sits on the House Education and Workforce Committee, where she is on the Workforce Protections as well as the Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) subcommittees. Omar also serves as the vice ranking member of the House Budget Committee, the vice chair of the Progressive Caucus, and the vice chair of the Medicare for All Caucus. She was reelected in 2020 and 2022.

Target of bullying

Even before Omar joined the U.S. House of Representatives, she was a target of Pres. Donald Trump’s bullying. Throughout his presidency, he made deceptive statements about her. In one such instance, Trump falsely claimed that Omar approved of al-Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. He demanded brashly that Omar and other Squad members return to their home countries, unjustly questioning their allegiance to the United States. He went so far as to designate Omar “unpatriotic,” despite the fact that she is a lawfully elected representative and American citizen. At Trump rallies, chants of “send her back,” directed at Omar, created a hostile and divisive environment.