The revelation comes after reports that El-Sayed deleted other posts supporting the ‘defund the police’ movement
Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate in the Democratic primary for Michigan’s open Senate seat in 2026, called border agents “white supremacists” and blamed the United States for illegal immigration from Central America and in a since-deleted post on X.
In a Sept. 24, 2021, post on X, El-Sayed sounded off on a debunked claim alleging that a photograph depicted a border agent on horseback holding a whip while intercepting illegal immigrants. The agent was in fact holding the horse’s rein, and subsequent investigations cleared the border officials of wrongdoing.
“Blaming horses for the dudes riding them to whip Haitian refugees is like blaming Haiti for the fact they’re coming,” El-Sayed wrote. “How about asking how our policies decimate Caribbean & Central American (and so many other) countries—and why we allow white supremacists to police our borders?”
The revelation of El-Sayed’s post comes after the longtime left-wing activist received scrutiny for deleting other social media posts promoting the “defund the police” movement, CNN reported Monday. The anti-police activism championed by the Left in 2020 and 2021 has become increasingly toxic with the U.S. electorate, and El-Sayed’s radical position on immigration also puts him at odds with voters.
While El-Sayed blamed bad U.S. policy decisions for illegal immigration, the data show otherwise. Recent federal surveys indicate that immigrants, legal and illegal, most often come to the United States because the country has more economic opportunities and a higher level of safety than other parts of the world, Central America in particular.
It is precisely because so many more immigrants come to the United States than the country can conceivably assimilate that voters have backed more hawkish border policies in recent years. The issue has become salient in Michigan, with nearly 20 percent of voters saying it was their top voting concern last year, according to the Associated Press. Public support for stronger immigration laws played a significant role in President Donald Trump’s 2024 victory in the state, an AP survey shows.
El-Sayed has said Trump’s immigration policies are “destroy[ing] the rule of law” and accused the administration of using ICE to “terrorize neighborhoods,” but his claim that border agents are “white supremacists” is more extreme than the positions he has voiced since declaring his Senate candidacy.
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to a Washington Free Beacon request for comment.
The Senate candidate’s anti-ICE statements are similar to now-deleted X posts that he wrote against police. In one June 2020 post, he said police “have become standing armies we deploy against our own people,” CNN reported. He wrote in another that U.S. cities “spend WAY TOO MUCH on police departments to police poverty” and “Fixing that is what the #Defund movement is about.”
El-Sayed’s spokesman declined to address the post in a comment to CNN, saying instead that the candidate “is challenging government choices that defund food, healthcare, and social services while militarizing agencies like ICE in sharp contrast to Donald Trump’s presidency because real safety comes from investing in people—not in tanks and tear gas.”
El-Sayed drew controversy last month when he sent a fundraising email marking the second anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack that made no mention of the terror group’s atrocities and instead blamed Israel for its retaliatory war.
“Two years ago this month, Netanyahu’s military launched a ground invasion of Gaza,” the email read without noting Hamas’s massacre of 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping of hundreds more.
El-Sayed will face off against Rep. Haley Stevens and State Sen. Mallory McMorrow in the Democratic primary for the Michigan Senate seat on Aug. 4, 2026. The winner will likely take on Republican candidate and former House member Mike Rogers in a race expected to be one of the most competitive in the country.
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