Rep. Ilhan Omar Announces Father’s Death From Coronavirus Complications
Photo Credit: Ilhan Omar via Twitter
Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) father has died as a result of complications stemming from Covid-19, Omar announced Monday.
“It is with tremendous sadness and pain to say goodbye to my father, Nur Omar Mohamed,” Omar wrote on Twitter. “No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew and loved him.”
إِنَّا لِلّهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ
Surely, we belong to God and to him shall we return.
It is with tremendous sadness and pain to say goodbye to my father, Nur Omar Mohamed. No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew and loved him. pic.twitter.com/gb7q0gMXG2
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) June 16, 2020
She added in a statement that her father died as a result of “complications from Covid-19.” Omar’s mother died when Omar was 2 years old. The family fled Somalia when Omar was 8 before spending four years in a Kenyan refugee camp and finally immigrating to the United States in 1995.
Shortly after her 2018 election to a congressional seat representing Minneapolis, Omar credited her father with helping her to navigate life in the U.S. “He said, ‘Listen, these people who are doing all of these things to you, they’re not doing something to you because they dislike you. They are doing something to you because they feel threatened in some way by your existence,” Omar said in an interview.
The Minnesota congresswoman has three children, the oldest of whom is 17-year-old Isra Hirsi, a climate activist.
