The former husband of Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar works as a political science researcher thousands of miles away from the federal immigration probe targeting the Somali-born lawmaker in Washington. President Donald Trump called on Omar to immediately resign on Thursday after a federal court filing identified the Democrat as "Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar." The president and other conservative critics have repeatedly alleged without evidence she married Elmi to skirt immigration laws. "It was just revealed just a little while ago that ... her name is not Ilhan Omar, the one that she used to get elected and sworn into Congress," Trump told supporters in Iowa.
"She used a fake name to be sworn in. I assume she must immediately have to resign from Congress." Omar, for her part, has repeatedly denied the accusation, which she most recently addressed during an interview with MS NOW's Chris Hayes on Wednesday. The congresswoman traced the rumor to a Somali blog post later embraced by right-wing conspiracy theorists citing "random people" who claimed she had introduced them to Elmi.
Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen who was married to Omar from 2009 through 2017, is currently listed as a doctoral researcher at the University of Bristol's School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies. He also previously served as a visiting scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and as an affiliate researcher at the British Institute in Eastern Africa in Kenya. The 41-year-old's research focuses on violence against "queer people in Kenya," as well as the "intersections of sexuality, politics, and structural marginalization," according to his University of Bristol profile.
"He is currently completing his doctoral thesis, provisionally titled: ‘Bravery Amidst Brutality: A Queer Resistance to Violence and Criminalization in Contemporary Kenya,'" the bio continues. As a graduate teacher at the university, Elmi also previously led undergraduate seminars on political theory and contemporary global politics. He's also interested in political party systems across Africa, with extensive prior research with the Political Parties Database Project and the Political Parties in Africa Project, according to his school biography.
"Through these works, he has collected quantitative data on elections, party organization, and political leadership in Malawi, Uganda, and Zambia, and produced comparative country-specific dossiers on Angola, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and Zambia," the profile continues, adding that he had been a "top-ranked student" while at the University of Bristol and the University of Leicester. In 2022, Elmi received a full doctorate scholarship from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council, according to his biography, which does not mention Omar, 44, who denied marrying him on Wednesday as part of any fraudulent activity and dismissed unsubstantiated claims that they are related. "They just kind of went and found random people who were like, 'She introduced us.
She introduced him to us and said he was her brother,' which is, you know, insane," Omar said. "I mean, I don't know those people that they talk about." Asked flatly whether she was related to Elmi, Omar replied: "Not to my knowledge." Attempts to reach Elmi on Friday were unsuccessful. An Instagram profile linked to his name had been recently removed, but his Substack account bills him as a "sidewalk social scientist." Elmi also detailed the months he spent in Johannesburg in an Instagram post earlier this year, describing a "deeply enriching and grounding" experience.
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