Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) confirmed in a statement late Monday that her father, Nur Omar, had died of complications from the novel coronavirus.
The big picture: The 37-year-old's father and grandfather raised her following her mother's death in Somalia, per Politico. She and Nur Omar arrived in the U.S. as refugees in 1995. Omar became in 2018 the first Somali-American elected to Congress and one of the first two Muslim women elected. She urged people on Sunday to take precautions against COVID-19 during protests, tweeting: "The pandemic is not over." More than 116,000 people have died from the virus in the U.S., per Johns Hopkins.
إِنَّا لِلّهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) June 16, 2020
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
