Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed confirmed Saturday night that his sister-in-law, Mariam Jukaku, had been placed on the federal government’s terrorist watchlist during the Obama administration, but said she was removed from it by 2016.
El-Sayed’s acknowledgment came after Fox News senior correspondent Mike Tobin approached him in a hallway and asked about court documents naming Jukaku as a plaintiff in a 2016 lawsuit challenging her placement on the list, formally called the Terrorist Screening Dataset.
“There’s reporting in a lawsuit that now backs it up. And documentation with the lawsuit that Mariam Jukaku, who’s your sister-in-law, that she was on the terrorist watch list?” Tobin asked, according to Fox News.
“Yeah,” El-Sayed responded.
El-Sayed defended his sister-in-law and criticized the system that led to her placement on the list, turning his comments toward his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers.
“She did nothing wrong and was captured on that and then sued and got off,” El-Sayed said. “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.”
El-Sayed also suggested the watchlist itself was unreliable, saying a “child” had also appeared on the same registry.
According to the 2016 lawsuit, Jukaku said she was subjected to extensive airport screening in 2012 without being told she had been flagged. The filing stated she was believed to have been removed from the watchlist by 2016.
El-Sayed said his sister-in-law sued and won her case, but Fox News reported that a federal appeals court overturned a ruling that had favored Jukaku and other plaintiffs in 2021. A separate lawsuit seeking damages was dismissed in 2017, according to Fox.
The FBI declined to comment on Jukaku’s past or current status on the list. “It is the U.S. government’s policy to neither confirm nor deny a person’s inclusion in the Terrorist Screening Dataset, commonly known as the terrorist watchlist,” the agency told Fox News.
Fox News reported that the watchlist lawsuit does not establish wrongdoing by either Jukaku or El-Sayed.
The timing of the disclosure comes ahead of a planned campaign appearance by former President Barack Obama alongside El-Sayed in Michigan on October 24. It was during the Obama administration that Jukaku was reportedly placed on the watchlist.
El-Sayed has faced other attempts this fall by Rogers and conservative commentators to link him to Muslim organizations, including allegations about his family’s purported ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which the United States and several Middle Eastern countries designate as a terrorist organization. El-Sayed’s campaign has called those allegations “racist and untrue.” Rogers described the watchlist revelation as “disqualifying.”
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