Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar is the first Somali American and African refugee in the United States Congress. She was born in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu. After spending four years in a Kenyan refugee camp to which Ilhan Omar and her family fled as Somalia descended into civil war, she and her family moved to America. They settled in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in downtown Minneapolis, which is nicknamed “Little Mogadishu” because of its high concentration of Somali American residents. Ilhan Omar became a U.S. citizen in 2000 and was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018. She was re-elected in 2020.