Obama admin put Abdul El-Sayed’s sister-in-law on terror watch list — they’re going to campaign together anyway
The Midwesterner
Victor Skinner
October 16, 2026
Former President Barack Obama this month will stump for Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, roughly a decade after his administration listed the U.S. Senate nominee’s sister-in-law on the terrorist watch list.
In two separate lawsuits, Mariam Jukaku, sister of El-Sayed’s wife, Sarah Jukaku, sued U.S. government officials with the help of the Council on American-Islamic Relations over her alleged inclusion on the Terrorist Screening Database during the Obama administration.
The database, commonly known as the terrorist watch list, “comprises over a million names of individuals suspected of terrorism-related activities,” according to EBSCO Information Services.
Mariam Jukaku filed for an injunction challenging her inclusion on the list in 2016, four years after she noticed her boarding pass at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport “was stamped with the ‘SSSS’ designation, indicating that she had been designated as a ‘known or suspected terrorist,’” according to a class action lawsuit filed at the same time.
. . .
Both lawsuits were eventually dismissed in 2017 and 2021, according to The Federalist.
“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 FBI wrote in response to a request for comment from the news site.
Obama is slated to campaign alongside El-Sayed in Detroit on Oct. 24, despite the former Wayne County health official’s harsh criticism of his administration in the past.
In 2016, Mariam Jukaku was living in California, where she led the Muslim Student Association in the early 2000s while serving as editor of Al Talib, “UCLA’s Muslim News Magazine.”
In a December 2004 article from the student newspaper the Daily Bruin, Mariam Jukaku complained about the government shutting down Al Talib advertisers over ties to terrorist networks, and accusations on Fox News about UCLA MSA chapters supporting terrorist organizations.
. . .
Mariam Jukaku, her sister, and El-Sayed all have close ties to CAIR Michigan, where Tayeb Jukaku, El-Sayed’s father in law and Mariam and Sarah’s father, served as president from 2005 to 2010.
Tayeb Jukaku, who immigrated to the U.S. from India, has donated at least $300,000 to a Fighting for Michigan PAC working to elect the country’s first Muslim senator.
Jukaku has served as a founding member of the Islamic Society of North America since at least 2007, around the time the organization and CAIR were identified by federal prosecutors as unindicted co-conspirators in the terrorism financing case USA v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.
That case resulted in the conviction of the foundation’s founders for funneling $12 million to Hamas, with prosecutors identifying the ISNA as one of eight groups that were or are members of the US Muslim Brotherhood.
“The Holy Land Foundation raised money for Hamas … using a joint bank account with the ISNA, which deposited checks into the account that were “often made payable to ‘the Palestinian Mujahadeen,’ the original name for the Hamas military wing,’” the Free Beacon reports, citing a July 2009 federal court ruling.
Jukaku’s largess is in addition to nearly $130,000 contributed to El-Sayed’s campaign from more than 41 people tied to CAIR, including national chair Manal Fakhoury, treasurer Eyas Abdeen, vice chair Emad Sabbah and Michigan board member Muzammil Ahmed. The CAIR affiliated super PAC Unity & Justice Fund also took credit for helping propel El-Sayed to victory during his primary against Congresswoman Haley Stevens, D-Birmingham, according to Townhall.
El-Sayed has denied any family connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, though his half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi has documented her proud ties to the U.S. designated terrorist organization in Egypt for over a decade.
“My family has long been MB, but I’ve always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively,” Abdelhadi wrote in a 2012 post to X unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon and Eyal Yakoby,
The June 24, 2012 post followed just weeks after Egyptians elected Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi president.
“Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect,” Abdelhadi posted, also on June 24, 2012.
There’s plenty of others, despite Abdelhadi’s efforts to scrub her account.
. . .
From 1999 through at least 2004, Elkomy worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency, which operated over 40 offices throughout the world and was ostensibly focused on health care, orphans, and disadvantaged people in areas of conflict.
In October 2004, the U.S. Department of Treasury designated the worldwide network, along with five senior officials, as an organization supporting terrorism, including support for Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
The announcement alleged IARA also supported Hamas and other terrorist organizations through at least 2003.
In March 2007, the Department of Justice charged IARA-US with a 33-count indictment for illegally transferring funds to Iraq, violating federal sanctions. A superseding indictment followed in January 2008, and in 2010 two of IARA’s board of directors pleaded guilty to conspiring to move more than $1 million to Iraq.
Evidence used to secure those convictions in USA v IARA included 945 exhibits detailing phone calls, faxes, wire transfers, tax forms, emails, bank statements and other documents.
The list of exhibits, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri in May 2010, references Elkomy 14 times, documenting participation in eight wire transfers, and five recorded calls between 1999 and 2002, including an IARA-USA transfer-request form for $24,607.34 to its Iraq office.
Elkomy’s brother and El-Sayed’s uncle, Mohamed or Mohammed Elkomy, was also listed in 19 exhibits involving phone calls between donors, IARA officials, and others.
. . .
Read more here.