Michigan Democrat confirms sister-in-law's terror watchlist lawsuit days before Obama campaign appearance
Abdul El‑Sayed, the Michigan Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, confirmed that his sister‑in‑law, Mariam Jukaku, was a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit that challenged her alleged placement on the federal Terrorist Screening Database, better known as the terrorist watchlist. The admission came during a Fox News interview on Saturday night, a few days before former President Barack Obama was set to campaign alongside the candidate on October 24.
The lawsuit, filed in 2016, claimed that Jukaku had been subjected to additional airport security screening in 2012 after being flagged by the database and that she had never been told why she had been identified. The complaint asserted that she had been removed from the watchlist by 2016 and that she had sued to clear her name. A federal court initially ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, but that ruling was overturned by a federal appeals court in 2021. A separate damages suit filed by Jukaku was dismissed in 2017.
When Fox News senior correspondent Mike Tobin asked El‑Sayed if court documents identified his sister‑in‑law on the watchlist, the Senate hopeful replied, “Yeah.” He then defended her, saying, “She did nothing wrong and was captured on that and then sued and got off.” El‑Sayed also criticized Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, stating, “You’ve got this system where folks are guilty until proven innocent because they’ve got different kinds of names, because of the infrastructure that people like Mike Rogers set up.”
The exchange took place in the context of a heated primary race. Rogers had recently called the allegations of El‑Sayed’s family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood “disqualifying,” a claim the El‑Sayed campaign described as “racist and untrue.” The campaign has repeatedly denied any link to the organization. Obama’s campaign team is scheduled to appear with El‑Sayed in Michigan on the night of October 24, ahead of the November 3 midterm election.
The FBI has maintained that it neither confirms nor denies individuals’ inclusion on the Terrorist Screening Dataset. “It is the U.S. government’s policy to neither confirm nor deny a person’s inclusion in the Terrorist Screening Dataset,” the agency said in a statement to Fox News.
The lawsuit itself does not establish wrongdoing on the part of Jukaku or El‑Sayed. It remains a point of contention in the campaign, as both candidates and their supporters navigate allegations that touch on national security, immigration, and identity politics.