Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (born October 4, 1982) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district since 2019. The district includes all of Minneapolis and some of its first-ring suburbs. From 2017 to 2019, Omar served in the Minnesota House of Representatives, representing part of Minneapolis. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
Omar is the first Somali American in the United States Congress and the first woman of color to represent Minnesota. She and Rashida Tlaib, who was also elected to the House in 2018, are the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress. Her political opponents, including Donald Trump, have made derogatory comments related to her background. She has also received several death threats.
A progressive Democrat, Omar serves as deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and has advocated for a $15 minimum wage, universal healthcare, student loan debt forgiveness, the protection of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
A frequent critic of Israel, Omar supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and has denounced Israel's settlement policies and military campaigns in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as the influence of pro-Israel lobbies in U.S. politics. In February 2023, the Republican-controlled House voted to remove Omar from her seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, claiming that comments she had made about Israel showed she could not be "an objective decision-maker".
Early life and education
Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somali Democratic Republic. Her birth date is given as October 4, 1982, in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress and the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library. The Library reports that her birth year was earlier given incorrectly as 1981, and that the Library and the US House worked to change it in 2019 at the request of Omar's congressional staff.
Omar spent her early years in Baidoa, in southern Somalia. Her father named her Ilham, meaning "inspiration" in Arabic. She was the youngest of seven siblings. Her father is Nur Omar Mohamed, an ethnic Somali from the Osman Mohamud sub-clan of Majeerteen, a clan in northeastern Somalia. He was a colonel in the Somali Army under Siad Barre, and served in the Ogaden War (1977–78). He also worked as a teacher trainer.
Omar's mother, Fadhuma Abukar Haji Hussein, an ethnic Benadiri, died when Omar was two. Omar was raised by her father and grandfather, who were moderate Sunni Muslims opposed to the rigid Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Her grandfather Abukar was the director of Somalia's National Marine Transport, and some of Omar's uncles and aunts also worked as civil servants and educators. She and her family fled Somalia to escape the Somali Civil War and spent four years in a Dadaab refugee camp in Garissa County, Kenya.
Omar's family secured asylum in the U.S. and arrived in New York in 1995, then lived for a time in Arlington, Virginia, before moving to and settling in Minneapolis, where her father worked first as a taxi driver and later for the post office. Her father and grandfather emphasized the importance of democracy during her upbringing, and at age 14 she accompanied her grandfather to caucus meetings, serving as his interpreter. She has spoken about school bullying she endured during her time in Virginia, stimulated by her distinctive Somali appearance and wearing of the hijab. She recalls gum being pressed into her hijab, being pushed down stairs, and physical taunts while she was changing for gym class. Omar remembers her father's reaction to these incidents: "They are doing something to you because they feel threatened in some way by your existence." Omar became a U.S. citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old.
Omar attended Thomas Edison High School, from which she graduated in 2001, and volunteered as a student organizer. She graduated from North Dakota State University in 2011 with a bachelor's degree, majoring in political science and international studies. Omar was a policy fellow at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
Early career
Omar began her professional career as a community nutrition educator at the University of Minnesota, working in that capacity from 2006 to 2009 in the greater Minneapolis–Saint Paul area. In 2012, she served as campaign manager for Kari Dziedzic's reelection campaign for the Minnesota State Senate. Between 2012 and 2013, she was a child nutrition outreach coordinator at the Minnesota Department of Education.
In 2013, Omar managed Andrew Johnson's campaign for Minneapolis City Council. After Johnson was elected, she served as his senior policy aide from 2013 to 2015. In February 2014, during a contentious precinct caucus that turned violent, Omar was attacked by five people and injured. According to MinnPost, the day before the caucus, Minneapolis city council member Abdi Warsame had told Johnson to warn Omar not to attend the meeting.
As of September 2015, Omar was the Director of Policy Initiatives of the Women Organizing Women Network, advocating for women from East Africa to take on civic and political leadership roles. In September 2018, Jeff Cirillo of Roll Call called her a "progressive rising star".
Minnesota House of Representatives
Elections
In 2016, Omar ran on the Democratic–Farmer–Labor (DFL) ticket for the Minnesota House of Representatives in District 60B, which includes part of northeast Minneapolis. On August 9, Omar defeated Mohamud Noor and incumbent Phyllis Kahn in the DFL primary. Her chief opponent in the general election was Republican nominee Abdimalik Askar, another activist in the Somali-American community. In late August, Askar announced his withdrawal from the campaign. In November, Omar won the general election, becoming the first Somali-American legislator in the United States. Her term began on January 3, 2017.
Tenure and activity
During her tenure as state representative for District 60B, Omar was an assistant minority leader for the DFL caucus. She authored 38 bills during the 2017–2018 legislative session.
Committee assignments
- Civil Law & Data Practices Policy
- Higher Education & Career Readiness Policy & Finance
- State Government Finance
Campaign finance investigations
In 2018, Republican state representative Steve Drazkowski publicly accused Omar of campaign finance violations, claiming that she used campaign funds to pay a divorce lawyer, and that her acceptance of speaking fees from public colleges violated Minnesota House rules. Omar responded that the attorney's fees were not personal but campaign-related; she offered to return the speaking fees. Drazkowski later accused Omar of improperly using campaign funds for personal travel to Estonia and locations in the U.S.
Omar's campaign dismissed the accusations as politically motivated and accused Drazkowski of using public funds to harass a Muslim candidate. In response to an editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune arguing that Omar should be more transparent about her use of campaign funds, she said: "these people are part of systems that have historically been disturbingly motivated to silence, discredit and dehumanize influencers who threaten the establishment."
In June 2019, Minnesota campaign finance officials ruled that Omar had to pay back $3,500 that she had spent on out-of-state travel and tax filing in violation of state law, plus a $500 fine. The Campaign Finance Board's investigation also found that, in 2014 and 2015, Omar had jointly filed taxes with a man to whom she was not legally married. Unlike some states, Minnesota does not recognize common-law marriage, and so such a joint filing is not legally permitted. But experts have said that if the taxpayer files a correction within three years, as Omar's attorney and accountants did in 2016, then there are normally no further consequences, and the Internal Revenue Service is unlikely to pursue punitive measures unless there is a large discrepancy or fraudulent intent. In response to the AP's request for comment, her campaign sent a statement saying, "all of Rep. Omar's tax filings are fully compliant with all applicable tax law."
U.S. House of Representatives
Elections
2018
On June 5, 2018, Omar filed to run for the United States House of Representatives from Minnesota's 5th congressional district after six-term incumbent Keith Ellison announced he would not seek reelection. On June 17, she was endorsed by the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party after two rounds of voting. Omar won the August 14 primary with 48.2% of the vote.
The 5th district is the most Democratic district in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest (it has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of D+26) and the DFL has held it since 1963. Omar faced health care worker and conservative activist Jennifer Zielinski in the November 6 general election and won with 78.0% of the vote, becoming the first Somali American elected to the U.S. Congress, the first woman of color to serve as a U.S. representative from Minnesota, and (alongside former Michigan state representative Rashida Tlaib) one of the first Muslim women elected to the Congress.
Omar received the largest percentage of the vote of any female candidate for U.S. House in state history, as well as the largest percentage for a non-incumbent U.S. House candidate (excluding those running against only minor-party candidates). She was sworn in on a copy of the Quran owned by her grandfather.
2020
Omar won the Democratic nomination in the August 11 Democratic primary, in which she faced four opponents. The strongest was mediation lawyer Antone Melton-Meaux, who raised $3.2 million in April–June 2020, compared to about $500,000 by Omar; much of Melton-Meaux's funding came from pro-Israel groups. Melton-Meaux was also endorsed by Minnesota's largest newspaper, The Star Tribune. This led some analysts to predict a close race, but Omar received 57.4% of the vote to Melton-Meaux's 39.2%.
She defeated Republican Lacy Johnson and Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate Michael Moore in the November 3 general election, with 64.3% of the vote to Johnson's 25.8% and Moore's 9.5%. Omar's margin of victory was 24 points less than Biden's in the district, the highest underperformance of any Democrat in the nation, which Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight attributed to increased Republican spending and Moore's progressive pro-marijuana campaign.
2022
In the August 9 Democratic primary, Omar faced former Minneapolis councilman Don Samuels and three other opponents. The campaign primarily focused on crime and Omar's effectiveness in office. Omar's campaign outspent Samuels's by $2.1 million to $800,000; Samuels ran television ads while Omar's campaign did not. Omar won the primary with 50.3% of the vote to Samuels's 48.2%, a margin of fewer than 2,500 votes.
2024
Omar won the August 13 Democratic primary with 56% of the vote against Don Samuels, whom she defeated in the 2022 primary, Tim Peterson, and Sarah Gad. She was reelected to a fourth term with 75.3% of the vote.
Tenure
Following Omar's election, the ban on head coverings in the U.S. House was modified, and Omar became the first woman to wear a hijab on the House floor. She is a member of the informal group known as "The Squad", whose members form a unified front to push for progressive changes such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. The other members of the Squad are Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Brian Stelter of CNN Business found that from January to July 2019 Omar was mentioned about twice as often on Fox News as on CNN and MSNBC, and about six times as often as James Clyburn, a Democratic House leader. A CBS News and YouGov poll of almost 2,100 U.S. adults conducted from July 17 to 19 found that Republican respondents were more aware of Omar than Democratic respondents. Omar has very unfavorable ratings among Republican respondents and favorable ratings among Democratic respondents. The same is true of the other members of the Squad.
On September 10, 2025, Omar condemned the assassination of Charlie Kirk, saying, "political violence is completely unacceptable and indefensible." She called conservatives who blamed the left for the shooting "full of shit" and reposted a video calling Kirk a "stochastic terrorist" who "with his last dying words ... was spewing racist dogwhistles". This led to two Republican efforts to strip Omar of her committee assignments. One of them, led by Representative Nancy Mace, failed on September 17, 2025, with four Republicans joining all Democrats to kill the measure.
Immigration raid
On October 12, 2026, agents of the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit executed a search warrant at Omar's DC home. Judge Matthew Sharbaugh of the DC District Court had granted the warrant but, because Omar is a member of Congress, limited access to her documents. The Department of Homeland Security has not publicly addressed the details of the warrant, but reports describe it as alleging irregularities in her and her family's immigration status stemming from paperwork her father filled out when she was a child. Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin had described an "ongoing investigation" into Omar's immigration forms about a month earlier.