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Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed acknowledged Saturday night that his sister-in-law was involved in a federal terrorist watch list trial during the Obama administration, just days before former President Barack Obama campaigned alongside him.
El-Sayed was confronted by Fox News senior correspondent Mike Tobin over court documents identifying his sister-in-law, Mariam Jukaku, as a plaintiff in a 2016 lawsuit challenging her alleged placement in the federal terrorism detection database, commonly known as the terrorist watch list.
“There is information in a lawsuit that now supports this. And documents in the lawsuit that Mariam Jukaku, who is your sister-in-law, was on the terrorist watch list?” » asked Tobin.
“Yeah,” El-Sayed replied.
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El-Sayed defended his sister-in-law, insisting she had committed no wrongdoing. (Anadolu via Getty Images)
El-Sayed later defended his sister-in-law, insisting she had committed no wrongdoing and turning his criticism toward his Republican Senate rival, Mike Rogers.
“She did nothing wrong and was arrested for it and then taken to court and got away with it,” El-Sayed said. “You have this system where people are guilty until proven innocent because they have different types of names, because of the infrastructure put in place by people like Mike Rogers.”
The exchange comes as Obama prepares to campaign alongside El-Sayed in Michigan on October 24, ahead of the November 3 midterm elections.
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Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed answers questions during a news conference in Detroit. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
According to the 2016 complaint, Jukaku underwent additional screening at the airport in 2012 and claimed she was never told why she was flagged. The filing says she was allegedly removed from the watch list in 2016.
El-Sayed said she sued and won, but a federal appeals court overturned a ruling favorable to the plaintiffs in 2021. A separate lawsuit seeking damages was dismissed in 2017.
Despite El-Sayed’s claim that she sued and won, a federal appeals court overturned a ruling favorable to the plaintiffs in 2021, while a separate lawsuit seeking damages was dismissed in 2017.
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Abdul El-Sayed speaks at the Michigan Democratic Party’s 2026 nominating convention in Lansing. (Sarah Rice/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The FBI said it neither confirms nor denies the status of individuals on the watch list.
“It is the policy of the United States Government to neither confirm nor deny the inclusion of any individual in the Terrorist Detection Dataset, commonly referred to as the Terrorist Watch List,” the agency told Fox News.
The exchange followed separate allegations regarding El-Sayed’s family’s alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, which his campaign called “racist and false.” Rogers called the allegations “disqualifying” on Saturday.
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The watchlist trial does not establish wrongdoing by Jukaku or El-Sayed.
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