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Ilhan Abdullahi Omar ... Early life and education. Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, on October 4, 1982, and spent her early years in Baidoa, Somalia.
- Overview
- Early life and education
- Entering politics
- Minnesota legislature
- U.S. House of Representatives
- Target of bullying
Ilhan Omar (born October 4, 1982, Mogadishu, Somalia) 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 refuge...
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.
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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 stat...
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, howe...
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.
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 dem...
Apr 13, 2021 · Ilhan Omar fled Somalia's civil war as a child and spent four years in a refugee camp before her family received asylum in the United States. She became a U.S. citizen in 2000 and in 2016 won a ...
The 37-year-old mother of three is the first Somali-American, first African-born American, and one of the first two Muslim American women to serve in the US Congress. Ms Omar has drawn adoration ...
About. Rep. Ilhan Omar represents Minnesota's 5 th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, which includes Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs. An experienced Twin Cities policy analyst, organizer, public speaker and advocate, Rep. Omar was sworn into office in January 2019, making her the first African refugee to become a ...
Mar 7, 2019 · Ilhan Omar: Reaction to first Somali-American elected to Congress. Originally working in education, she began her political career managing city council campaigns and working as a senior policy ...
Aug 15, 2018 · Around 9:30 P.M., shortly after the race was called, Omar ascended a podium at a Somali restaurant called Safari to the power anthem “Wavin’ Flag,” by the Somali-Canadian pop singer K’naan ...
