MINNEAPOLIS — It’s the largest Somali mall in the world, according to its owner.
It’s also where Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., spent a significant chunk of her Friday — marking her first day back in the public eye after the Oct. 12 raid on her Washington, D.C., home.
Fox News Digital got a look inside the Karmel Mall of Somalia, which isn’t like typical American malls that sport brand-name shops situated around a vast food court and end-capped by large department stores.
Rather, the building that boasts four floors of shops and 900 vendors resembles more of a storage facility. When shop owners arrive, they lift their metal garage doors, signifying that their stores are open. Scheduled opening and closing times don’t appear particularly stringent for shop owners.
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It was in the mall’s dining area, adorned with the Somali, Palestinian and American flags flying at the same height, that Omar dined among friends in the Somali community for lunch on Friday. State Attorney General Keith Ellison was also present. The ceiling of the food vendor area is painted light blue and emblazoned with a white star resembling the Somali flag.
Somali cafes sell traditional food, including sambusas, a flaky fried pastry filled with meat and spices, bijaye, which is fried cornmeal similar to a hush puppy or falafel, and goat meat and basmati rice. Many Somalis in the mall ate only with their hands, though Omar and her acquaintances could be seen using forks during their Friday lunch.
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Omar — who’s “real name” is Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, according to sources familiar with the criminal investigation into the congresswoman — was greeted by smiling patrons at the mall, some of whom she chatted with briefly and posed for photographs.
All the while, she and Ellison were surrounded by security guards.
Fox News Digital was allowed access into the mall by its Gaza-born owner, Basim Sabri, in order to film the congresswoman’s visit just after she and Ellison voted early at a Minneapolis polling station.
Prominently featured among the stores in the mall are shops selling prepaid electronic SIM cards for overseas calling and money transfer stores, including World Direct Link Corp., which advertises simple ways to send money to Somalia, Kenya and other East African nations.
There are also several travel agencies offering arrangements from the United States to the Middle East and East Africa. Traditional Somali clothiers sell their goods in the mall, while Somali barbers tend to customers in their own shops. English is the mall’s second language.
Elderly men, adorned in traditional Somali clothing and brimless white caps called koofiyad, sit in silence in metal chairs alongside the open walls of the mall, many staring onward, as if lost in thought.
“You are standing at the Karmel Mall, and the surrounding community next to us, and its referred to as [the] Islamic Peace Village by many other people as well,” Sabri told Fox News Digital in an interview outside his mall. “Karmel Mall is the largest Somali mall in the world, and it’s also the largest mall in the city of Minneapolis.”
The largest mall in the United States, the Mall of America, is located in nearby Bloomington, Minnesota.
“It is kind of an incubator setting where many businesses start in here, and then many succeed and grow and move somewhere else, to a bigger space,” said Sabri.
The mall isn’t explicitly for Somalis, though Sabri, a high-profile local figure, once banned Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey from the premises in February 2024 after Frey vetoed an Israel-Gaza ceasefire resolution passed by the City Council.
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However, there appears to be an implicit understanding that the mall is for Somalis. Outsiders, especially those with cameras, are scrutinized by security guards and mall patrons alike. Sabri told guards to stand down while Fox News Digital walked the mall earlier last week.
Sabri is friends with Omar, and also knew her late father, though he did not share details about the rumored Somali National Army colonel’s life or their relationship.
The congresswoman and Sabri posed for a photo alongside Ellison and a fourth, unidentified man, during the congresswoman’s luncheon. The mall owner and Ellison shared a brief but cordial conversation during the midday affair.
Fox News Digital spoke with Sabri for about an hour outside the mall in two informal interviews last Tuesday, without cameras rolling. He told stories about growing up poor in the Middle East and eventually moving to study in Minneapolis, where he later built a vast real estate empire that includes the mall. Sabri owns several apartment complexes in the vicinity of his Lake Street mall, occupied mostly by Somalis.
During the interviews, Sabri was often interrupted as he directed employees, most Somalis, to tasks which they in turn hustled to accomplish. Members of the Somali community stopped to greet him, including a man described as Rep. Omar’s “security.” Sabri also solicited conversations with passersby, all of whom recognized him.
The jovial character is clearly well-liked by his staff and known throughout the community.
He has the ear of local politicians, too, whom he repeatedly called “whores.” He arranged an interview for Fox News Digital with Minneapolis City Council Vice President Jamal Osman.
Sabri also has an air of worldly sophistication. He sends his son to Institut Le Rosey, known as the “School of Kings,” one of the most elite secondary schools in the world. It is located in Switzerland and has a price tag of about $184,000 per year.
But the mall owner has also faced troubles in the past.
In 2005, Sabri was sentenced to 33 months in federal prison for bribing a local Minneapolis public official. He told Fox News Digital about his time in prison, which included a brief stay at the infamous Federal Correctional Institution, Leavenworth in Kansas, almost boastfully.
Sabri bragged that the siloed Somali mall is evidence of assimilation on behalf of his foreign-born tenants and part of living the “American dream,” though the opposite seemed true.
“You can see [the] Somalis not only integrating in the community, but also prospering,” he said. “Somalis are very smart business individuals.”
“Yes, there’s some crooks in every society … just like every other community,” he said, apparently nodding to the massive fraud scandals that have plagued the Somali community in Minnesota in the national headlines.
“But my experience is that Somalis are very, very intelligent and extremely hard-working people.”
“So, I would invite anybody to come into the mall, and know that there are many people doing a great job and making a good living, and learning the American dream, and doing business, and opening businesses that eventually tend to be very successful for them.”