Comments Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed made on his podcast in 2020 are drawing renewed attention, in which he referred to people living in the country illegally as “undocumented Americans” and “our undocumented sisters and brothers.”
The remarks came from the May 12, 2020, episode of El-Sayed’s podcast, America Dissected. In that episode, El-Sayed criticized then-President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, saying Trump had “weaponized immigration for his political purposes.”
“There is no issue that better demonstrates that than immigration,” El-Sayed said. “From his decision to end the DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] program, to his Muslim ban, to his activation of the public charge rule, to his concentration camps at the southern border, to the way he has deployed ICE to round up and deport people.”
He went on to describe immigrants broadly as people seeking a better life, drawing a comparison to the ancestors of most Americans. “And beneath it all are immigrants, actual people with hopes and dreams and fears and lives,” El-Sayed said. “People who have come here for nothing more than the notion that they could build a better life here. My parents, and unless you’re Native American or black, your parents or grandparents or great-great-grandparents came here for the exact same reasons.”
El-Sayed also addressed the toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on people without legal immigration status. “Undocumented people are among the most vulnerable in our society, particularly during this pandemic,” he said. “We have deemed their labor, quote-unquote, essential, while deeming their existence illegal. And this pandemic has hit undocumented Americans hard.”
Later in the same episode, he referred to “our undocumented sisters and brothers.”
More recent comments on ICE
The 2020 podcast remarks come after more recent statements from El-Sayed calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In an interview with podcaster Evan James, El-Sayed said of ICE, “It seems to me that the middle position is like, this shouldn’t exist.”
He added: “I would like to abolish the agency that has existed, in large part, to end or at least push back against the rule of law and the Constitution. That should be an obvious thing that everyone should say.”
In separate comments reported in May, El-Sayed said he traveled to Minneapolis “to check it out for myself” and argued that ICE’s activities there were disconnected from immigration enforcement at the southern border. “Minneapolis is not on the southern border. Wrong border,” he said. “So [ICE] is not about immigration. This is about whether or not we want to live under a constitution and we believe in the rule of law.”
El-Sayed is running for the U.S. Senate seat in Michigan.
