Michigan’s two U.S. Senate candidates met for a final debate ahead of the November 3 election, with Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers clashing over immigration enforcement and policing.
El-Sayed told viewers he does not believe the country needs Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “I believe that we don’t need ICE. In fact, we can go back to INS, back to when we were a lot more safe and secure when it came to immigration. And then, we need to make sure we have a clear pathway to citizenship so that people can come here and take opportunities that are legal for them,” he said, referring to the Immigration and Naturalization Service that predated the post-9/11 creation of the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.
Rogers, a former congressman, used the debate to press El-Sayed on his record regarding police funding. Rogers has said El-Sayed’s positions would “make us less safe,” pointing to past statements El-Sayed made calling for police to be defunded.
El-Sayed has previously said on the record, “I believe that we do need to defund the police.” He later deleted thousands of old posts from his social media account, including messages supporting the defund-the-police movement. Screenshots of several of those deleted posts have continued to circulate online.
Asked in June about why he removed the posts, El-Sayed did not directly answer the question. Instead, he said, “Let me just speak to a vision for public safety that I think all of us can agree with.”
El-Sayed has also drawn attention for comments on gun rights, previously arguing that the Second Amendment’s protections should be understood in the context of the firearms available when it was written: “When they promised the right to bear arms, they had muskets. So, yeah, everyone should have equal rights to a musket.”
In his opening statement at Wednesday’s debate, El-Sayed described his record working with law enforcement, saying he had experience “working alongside law enforcement, improving the, the uh, the operations of our, um of our, uh medical examiner’s office.”
The exchanges leave Michigan voters with competing records to weigh before Election Day: El-Sayed’s past calls to defund police and abolish ICE against his more recent attempts to reframe those positions, and Rogers’ efforts to hold him to the earlier statements.
