“No One Is Above the Law”
What’s in a name?
The MAGA press is salivating over the possibility that Rep. Ilhan Omar could be denaturalized and deported. Federal agents have searched her Washington, D.C. home, and the left is crying crocodile tears, conveniently forgetting the raids on Trump supporters and the FBI search of the president’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Back then, if I remember correctly, Omar was among those insisting that “no one is above the law.” Well, it’s payback time. Trump is no fan of Omar and has said nothing but hateful things about her. Now his Feds are turning over every leaf to strip her of her citizenship and send her back to Somalia, one of Trump’s “s-hole countries.”
The latest chapter in this saga comes from the MAGA press. The Western Journal which breathlessly reports that Omar may not even be her real name:
According to the report, her “real” name is Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, not Ilhan Abdullahi Omar, and she has lived her “entire life under an alias, meaning every form she ever filled out could now be called into question.” Actually, this seems to me as a bit grasping at straws. Her father’s name is listed as either Nur Omar Mohamed or Nur Said Mohamed Elmi. I know nothing about Somali naming conventions, so Ilhan Nur Said Elmi may well be a perfectly legitimate version of her name as might be Ilhan Abdullahi Omar. But so what? Muhammed Ali never legally changed his name from Cassius Marcellus Clay. So did he too live his “entire life under an alias?” Big effing deal. The name issue isn’t a deportable offense.
The more interesting detail is that her second marriage may have been her brother whose surname is also Elmi. The marriage, long rumored to have been a green-card marriage meant to let him stay in the country, ended in divorce in 2017. He is now a professor and a British national living in the UK. For all I know, Elmi is the Somali equivalent of Smith or Jones, so the shared name may not mean much either. Either way, it may be much ado about nothing because it may not be a deportable offense either.
Immigration lawyers say the marriage charge is a legal dead end, which contradicts Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who has said deportation could follow if authorities establish that immigration fraud occurred. Of course, Mullin is not a lawyer, and he obviousy didn’t consult one before speaking.
Those lawyers say a U.S. citizen who takes part in a sham marriage can’t be deported for it. If fraud were proven, Omar’s alleged brother would be barred from reentering the United States, but Omar herself couldn’t be deported on that basis alone.
Still, a lot is being made of that marriage – her second of four – probably because it makes for good headlines. More buzz came from her interview with the friendly MS NOW, in which she was asked whether the man she married was her brother. Her answer: “Not to my knowledge.” A weird answer, to say the least. A DNA test could settle the question, and a New York Post columnist claims one already has: “Five years ago I wrote a column about DNA test results that showed there was a 99.999998 percent chance that Ilhan Omar and her second husband Ahmed Elmi were siblings. A few hours before we went to press my informant was arrested by Biden’s FBI. Funny that.” But again, that makes good copy even though it may not be a deportable offense.
Where Omar is vulnerable is her father’s history. He claimed to have been an educator/tutor on his citizenship application. But he was actually a colonel in the Somali army during its war with Ethiopia and fled the country when the regime fell. If he lied, his citizenship could be revoked, and so could Omar’s, since she and her siblings received automatic citizenship as minor children of a naturalized parent.
There is also some doubt about whether Omar was actually a minor at the time. She says she was 17, but there are indications she may have been 18. If so, she would not have qualified for automatic citizenship, and it could be revoked. Omar says her birth certificate was destroyed in the chaos in Somalia. Congressional records list her birth date as October 1982, which would have made her 17 when she was naturalized. However, a political opponent points out that the birth year on the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library’s website was changed from 1981 to 1982. In any event, there is a lot of smoke here.
My prediction? Trump will have her deported first, worry about the legalities second and fight the deportation in court after she is out of the country. Let’s see if I’m wrong.
