Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) speaks at a campaign rally for Senator (I-VT) and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at Nashua Community College on December 13, 2019 in Nashua, New Hampshire.
(Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s metamorphosis from refugee to the first Somali-American in Congress has been well-documented.
Civil war broke out when she was 8, and after her family’s compound came under attack by militia, the family escaped and eventually made it to a refugee camp in Kenya, where Omar spent four years before the family moved to the U.S.
WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 23: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) participates in a panel discussion during the Muslim Collective For Equitable Democracy Conference and Presidential Forum at the The National Housing Center July 23, 2019 in Washington, DC.
READ MORE: Ilhan Omar announces she’s newly married to her former political consultant Tim Mynett
She then had what she called “a Britney Spears-style meltdown” in which she shaved her head and eloped with a man, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, whom she wrote she “spent so little time with that I wouldn’t even make him a footnote in my story if it weren’t for the fact that this event turned into the main headline later on.”
(AP/Christian Thompson)
“SPECULATION AND CONSPIRACIES”
Since Omar ran for state lawmaker in 2016, she has been met with allegations that Elmi, the man she married during her split from Hirsi, is her brother.
