Vice President J.D. Vance declared Friday that the White House will “go after” Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar for alleged immigration fraud.
President Donald Trump and other conservatives have long accused Omar of marrying her brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, to facilitate his move to the U.S. in 2009. Vance said on “The Benny Johnson Show” that the White House “definitely” believes Omar committed fraud, and they are actively looking into options on how to investigate and ultimately “go after” her for it.
“So we actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America,” Vance said. “And I talked to [White House deputy chief of staff] Stephen Miller about this actually recently. We’re trying to look at what the remedies are. That’s the thing that we’re trying to figure out is what are the legal remedies now that we know that she’s committed immigration fraud? How do you go after her? How do you investigate her? How do you actually do the thing? How do you build the case necessary to get some justice for the American people? There’s a related issue, Benny, which is she has been at the center of a lot of the worst fraudsters in the Somali community.” (RELATED: Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib Try To Shout Down Trump During State Of The Union)
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Omar allegedly married her brother, Ahmed Elmi, in a 2009 civil ceremony in Minnesota, after marrying Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi seven years earlier, according to a timeline published by the Daily Mail. She split from Elmi in 2011, reconciled with Hirsi and had a third child with him. Omar claimed that she and Elmi separated in 2011, though the divorce did not take place until 2017.
Omar married Hirsi, who is not her brother, for a second time in 2018. The two divorced a second time after she allegedly had an affair with Democratic consultant Tim Mynett, according to the New York Post.
Vance is heading a new anti-fraud task force, which convened for the first time on Friday. The committee is tasked with cracking down on fraud being committed on social services in the U.S., particularly in Minnesota.
Dozens of Somalis in Minnesota were charged in the theft of $1 billion in taxpayer money for state and federal social services programs, including $300 million from Feeding Our Future, a child nutrition program that fed low-income children during the COVID-19 pandemic. YouTuber Nick Shirley exposed nearly a dozen Somali-run daycare centers for not actually providing services.
Omar attacked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for targeting Somali communities throughout Minnesota, even trying to claim in December that Somalis were victims of the welfare fraud scheme.
Vance announced in February that the administration would halt some funding for Medicaid in Minnesota over fraud concerns. He said that the action was to “ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people’s tax money.”
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