Fact-check: "We know she married her brother" — Mullin on Ilhan Omar

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin: "We know that she married her brother to try to bring him to the United States." Our verdict: mostly-false, truth score 0.15, confidence 0.80.

The words were really said. What they assert has never been established — in ten years, no birth certificate, no immigration file, no court finding, no charge.

On September 14, 2026, The Benny Show ("Did We Just Get Ilhan Omar Deported? Team Trump Just Confirmed…") plays tape at 16:56 from host Benny Johnson's own interview with Mullin at the GOP midterm convention in Texas, then restates the claim as settled fact.

We steelman it first. Ilhan Omar did legally marry Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in Hennepin County in 2009 and did not file for divorce until 2017. The Somali naming-convention argument is the accusers' sturdiest strand. The Minnesota Campaign Finance Board found in June 2019 that she filed joint tax returns with Ahmed Hirsi in 2014–15 while legally married to Elmi — an anomaly nobody has explained to a neutral party's satisfaction. ICE withheld records under FOIA Exemption 7(A) in May 2026.

Then the other side. The Star Tribune investigated for months and, on June 23, 2019, could neither conclusively confirm nor rebut the sibling claim. Snopes re-checked on December 2, 2025 and found no substantive corroboration. Elmi is a British citizen who attended high school near Minneapolis and North Dakota State University, then returned to London around 2011 — people who marry for status do not leave. In August 2016, then-U.S. Attorney Andy Luger wrote that his office was not investigating. And Omar naturalized in 2000, nine years before the 2009 marriage; denaturalization requires proving fraud in procuring naturalization itself, and no official has publicly explained how a 2009 marriage reaches a 2000 citizenship.

Whether Elmi is Omar's brother is genuinely open. Unproven is not a synonym for false, and we don't treat it as one.