A scrubbed 2013 Father’s Day post from Rep. Ilhan Omar naming her father “Nur Said” has resurfaced as federal investigators examine her identity records and long-denied family claims.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., told Fox News Digital her real name is Ilhan Abdullahi Omar after federal court papers tied to a search of her Washington, D.C., home listed her as Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, also known as Ilhan Abdullahi Omar.
The filing does not explain why that first name appears, and it does not prove she used a false identity. Still, the paper trail landed in the middle of an ongoing criminal investigation into possible false statements on immigration and naturalization documents. Federal agents searched her D.C. residence on Oct. 12 as part of that probe.
Omar answered the name question in blunt terms.
"Ilhan Abdullahi Omar, you know it," she said. "It’s Ilhan Abdullahi Omar."
Two people familiar with the investigation told Fox that Ilhan Nur Said Elmi may be her legal name. Her office disputed that characterization. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The detail now drawing fresh attention is a June 2013 social media post Omar later deleted. In it she wrote a Father’s Day message that used a different name for her father than the one that appears in several public records.
"Happy Father’s Day to my aabo Nur Said, I am forever grateful to Allah for giving me the best father...,"
She deleted the post on the morning of Sept. 19, 2019. The Daily Caller had already reported an archived version that year. Omar’s office did not answer Fox’s Friday request for comment on the deletion.
A report on federal sources and Omar’s legal name has kept the identity question in front of voters who thought they already knew the basics.
Several records, including a 2020 Congressional Black Caucus memorial marking her father’s death, refer to him as Nur Omar Mohamed. Fox News has not independently verified claims that his name was Nur Said Elmi Mohamed rather than Nur Omar Mohamed. An Oxford University historian, Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, has been cited in other coverage referring to the father as Nur Said in connection with alleged military experience.
Somali naming practice generally stacks a given name, the father’s given name, and the paternal grandfather’s given name. Name overlap alone does not prove a blood relationship. That limit matters when critics point from “Nur Said” in the old post to the full name of Omar’s former husband.
Omar’s marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi ended in divorce in 2017. She later legally married Ahmed Hirsi in 2018. Critics have long claimed Elmi is her brother. Omar and her office have rejected that claim for years.
A spokesperson told Fox News Digital on Thursday that Omar has “repeatedly and unequivocally denied” what the office called a “baseless, disgusting conspiracy theory” that she married her brother.
In a Wednesday interview on MS NOW, Omar was asked whether her one-time husband may have been a “distant relative.”
"Not to my knowledge,"
She has described the federal probe itself as a political attack and, at a news conference, blamed President Donald Trump for death threats and attacks against her.
Readers following Omar’s hedging on brother-marriage rumors after the federal raid will recognize the same pattern: short denials, few documents, and a story that refuses to leave the stage.
An explanation recirculated online and attributed to her spokesperson claimed “Nur Said” was her father’s childhood nickname, that he kept a public page under that name, and that the tweet was deleted because Omar and her family had received threats. Fox did not present that full statement as a freshly verified, on-the-record comment in its latest reporting.
The Oct. 12 search of Omar’s Washington home sits inside a broader criminal investigation focused on possible false statements on immigration and naturalization paperwork. Related reporting around the same Fox coverage has described agents seizing her phone and investigators subpoenaing relatives. No charges are described as filed in the account.
A former Minnesota federal immigration judge, speaking generally, said that if investigators proved someone knowingly used a false name on federal forms, the conduct could be examined under the federal false statements statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1001. That statute makes it a crime to knowingly and willfully make a materially false statement in a matter within federal jurisdiction. The judge stressed that any case would turn on the specific documents, whether the statement was material, and whether intent could be shown. Nothing in the reporting says Omar has been charged under that law.
Pressure has also come from the top of the Republican ticket, including coverage of how Trump demanded Omar resign over the alleged fake name while the records fight continued.
Omar has continued to appear in Minnesota. A photo caption in the Fox report shows her speaking to media on Jan. 16, 2026, after a hearing at the Minnesota Senate Building in St. Paul.
Separate follow-ups have tracked the physical fallout from the raid, including claims that agents seized material Omar had kept close and her later statement that she would leave the D.C. home after the immigration search.
Here is the sequence the reporting actually locks down. In June 2013 Omar posted a Father’s Day tribute to “aabo Nur Said.” In 2017 she divorced Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. In 2018 she married Ahmed Hirsi. In 2019 the archived post drew coverage and she deleted the original on the morning of Sept. 19. In 2020 the Congressional Black Caucus memorialized her father as Nur Omar Mohamed. On Oct. 12 federal agents searched her D.C. residence over possible false statements on immigration and naturalization documents. In the days around that coverage she told Fox her name is Ilhan Abdullahi Omar, her office branded the brother-marriage claim a conspiracy theory, and court papers still listed Ilhan Nur Said Elmi as an also-known-as.
What the same record does not settle is just as plain. The court filing does not say why Ilhan Nur Said Elmi appears. Fox has not independently verified the father’s full legal name. The specific immigration or naturalization forms under review are not laid out. The Justice Department has not described the scope of the investigation on the record. And the brother allegation remains exactly what both sides have made it: a serious charge from critics, and a flat denial from Omar and her office.
Members of Congress ask the public to trust their word on borders, asylum, and who belongs in the country. When their own names, marriages, and immigration paperwork become the subject of a federal search warrant, voters are entitled to documents, not shrug-off lines and deleted posts.
Accountability does not run one direction only. If the records clear her, release them. If they do not, the public should not have to reconstruct a member of Congress’s identity from a 2013 Father’s Day tweet.
