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By Billal Rahman and Joshua Rhett Miller
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U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar's account of fleeing Somalia's civil war as a child offers a timeline of her early life, family history and eventual resettlement in the United States, including a recollection of how officials recorded relatives' birth dates during the refugee screening process.
The Minnesota Democrat's 2020 memoir, This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey From Refugee to Congresswoman, describes a childhood disrupted by fighting in Mogadishu and a journey that took the family through Somalia and Kenya before they were eventually resettled in the United States.
Omar has faced a wave of scrutiny from MAGA hard-liners and conservative critics over longstanding, unproven allegations concerning her former husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Omar has repeatedly denied that Elmi is her brother or that their marriage was fraudulent. Federal agents searched Omar's Washington home on October 12, and investigators obtained a DNA sample, a source close to the matter previously told Newsweek. Omar's sister, Sahra Noor, also voluntarily spoke with investigators, according to the source. No court has found Omar committed immigration fraud.
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The memoir mentions Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi, Omar's first husband, several times, but Elmi, whom Omar legally married in 2009, is not mentioned in Chapter 11, which covers 2009 to 2011.
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Omar has repeatedly rejected allegations about Elmi. In 2019, The Daily Beast reported the claim could be traced to an anonymous 2016 post on the Somali diaspora forum Somali Spot that provided no evidence and was written by a user the outlet said had a history of trolling. In her memoir, Omar says the scrutiny prompted her to issue a statement explaining her civil and religious marriages and separations. She says in her memoir she later regretted responding and describes the immigration fraud allegation, repeated by President Donald Trump in 2019, as a “baseless conspiracy theory.”
What the Memoir Says About Omar's Age
National Review senior political correspondent Jim Geraghty questioned Omar's birth date in a post on X, pointing to a chapter of her memoir headed "War: 1989-1991, Mogadishu, Somalia." Omar writes: "I was eight years old when civil war broke out in Somalia." Geraghty cited the July 1989 Mogadishu riots and argued that if Omar was eight at that point, she would have been born in 1981 rather than 1982.
However, later in the same chapter, Omar describes 1992 as "the year after the war began," placing the war's beginning in 1991. That is consistent with her publicly listed birth date of October 4, 1982, which meant she was eight for most of 1991.
"Representative Omar and her family fled Somalia’s civil war when she was eight," a section about Omar reads. "She spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before emigrating to the United States."
The exact start of Somalia's civil war is not straightforward. The U.N.'s history of the conflict says Siad Barre fell in January 1991, while MSF's account describes Somalia as being in civil war by December 1990.
The July 1989 riots occurred earlier, but the memoir does not say those riots were what Omar meant when she wrote that she was 8 when civil war broke out.
In her memoir, Omar writes that she stopped wearing the hijab at 16, before returning to it at 23 and wearing it ever since.
In a subsequent chapter, Omar describes herself as a "twenty-year-old mom” while pursuing an associate degree and says she later became pregnant again with her eldest child, Isra Hirsi, who was born on February 22, 2003, when Omar was 20.
Will Chamberlain, senior counsel at the Article III Project and Internet Accountability Project, questioned Omar's birth date on X, pointing to her statement in the memoir that "I was thirty years old” and her account of a three-month trip to Africa in 2011. Chamberlain argued this would place her birth in 1981 at the latest. However, the chapter covers 2011-2012, and the two statements are separate: Omar says she was 30 while discussing completing her studies and elsewhere writes, “in 2011 I embarked on a three-month trip with my father.”
In a February 13, 2014, Minnesota Star Tribune op-ed, Omar described herself as a “31-year-old Somali-Muslim woman, a mother of three and an unapologetic progressive.” The age is consistent with her listed birth date. The passage is also reproduced in her memoir.
"Some suggest that as a woman, I meddle in political affairs and need to be 'put in my place,'" Omar wrote in the op-ed detailing an attack during a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party caucus earlier that month resulting in her being treated for a concussion. "Some say I deserved what I got because my opinions are contrary to those of a few male political leaders in our community. In addition, a small group has decided that one Somali elected official is enough and now the community should sit down and be quiet."
Omar's office did not return inquiries by Newsweek on Tuesday related to her memoir.
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The Family's Move to the United States
Omar writes that her family discussed resettling in the United States while living in the Utange refugee camp in Kenya. She initially opposed leaving, telling her family, "I don't want to go anywhere!" Her father told her, "The United States is different," and said America could become their home.
The family then went through the refugee resettlement process. During an interview with a UNHCR official, Omar writes that officials took the names and birth dates of every family member. Her father and four oldest siblings were questioned, while the three youngest sat to the side. The family learned about a year later that they had passed the initial screening and could resettle in the United States. The passage does not say what birth date was recorded for Omar.
Omar writes that the family passed health screenings and received vaccinations before leaving for the United States. Catholic Charities arranged for them to live in Arlington, Virginia, and the family traveled to Nairobi for a pre-departure orientation.
Omar describes being disappointed by what she initially saw in America compared with the image presented to refugees before their arrival. She recounted a conversation she had with her father following their arrival to the country, "This isn't America," Omar said. Her father responded: "This isn't our America. We'll get to our America."
In Arlington, all seven family members moved into a two-bedroom apartment and applied for Social Security cards, according to the memoir. Omar and her siblings underwent another medical screening and received the same immunizations they had received in Kenya because they needed medical records to attend school. Omar writes that her father protested because he worried the additional shots could make them sick.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Edward T. Cummins
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