Michigan Senate Nominee Abdul El-Sayed Confirms Sister-in-Law Was a Plaintiff in a 2016 Terror Screening List Lawsuit. Here’s What the Court Record Shows
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has confirmed that his sister-in-law was a plaintiff in a 2016 federal lawsuit challenging her alleged placement on the government’s terrorist screening list, days before former President Barack Obama is scheduled to campaign with him.
El-Sayed was asked about the lawsuit Saturday by Fox News senior correspondent Mike Tobin. “She did nothing wrong and was captured on that and then sued and got off,” El-Sayed said in the interview, which Fox News posted on video.
Federal court records reviewed by The Digital Free Press show what the 2016 terror screening list lawsuit claimed and how it ended.
WHAT THE 2016 TERROR SCREENING LIST LAWSUIT CLAIMED
The case is Doe v. Piehota, No. 1:16-cv-00373, filed April 5, 2016, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, according to the federal docket. It was a proposed class action brought by 18 plaintiffs against officials of the Terrorist Screening Center and other federal agencies, sued in their individual capacities for money damages. El-Sayed’s sister-in-law is listed among the plaintiffs. The Digital Free Press is not naming her because she is a private person.
The complaint says that on or about March 21, 2012, she went to Detroit Metropolitan Airport to fly to California, could not check in online, and was given a boarding pass stamped “SSSS.” The complaint says that stamp indicated she had been designated a “known or suspected terrorist,” and that she was subjected to extensive searches at security.
According to the complaint, she filed a redress request with the Department of Homeland Security and a civil rights complaint with the Transportation Security Administration, and was never told the factual basis for her alleged placement on the list or given a meaningful chance to contest it. The complaint also says that, on information and belief, she was no longer on the list by the time the suit was filed.
These are the allegations in the complaint. The government has a long-standing policy of not confirming who is 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 FBI told Fox News.
HOW THE CASE ENDED
The case never reached a ruling on the plaintiffs’ claims. The judge, U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris, paused the case in November 2016 while the Supreme Court considered a related question about damages suits against federal officials, according to the court record as summarized by the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. After the Supreme Court’s 2017 decision in Ziglar v. Abbasi, the parties filed a joint stipulation of dismissal without prejudice, and the court closed the case on Sept. 14, 2017.
Many of the same plaintiffs filed a separate lawsuit the same day, Elhady v. Piehota, which sought changes to the terror screening list system itself. A federal judge ruled for those plaintiffs in 2019, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed that ruling in March 2021 and ordered judgment for the government. El-Sayed’s sister-in-law is not among the plaintiffs listed in the appeals court’s decision.
EL-SAYED’S RESPONSE
In the interview, El-Sayed defended his sister-in-law and turned his criticism to his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers. “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,” he said.
Nothing in the court record shows wrongdoing by El-Sayed or his sister-in-law, and the lawsuit made no finding about why she was screened.
Obama is set to campaign with El-Sayed in Michigan on Oct. 24, ahead of the Nov. 3 election, Fox News reported.
Sources: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Doe v. Piehota, No. 1:16-cv-00373 (complaint filed April 5, 2016; docket via CourtListener); Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse case summary; Elhady v. Piehota, No. 1:16-cv-00375 (complaint); U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Elhady v. Kable, No. 20-1119 (March 30, 2021); Fox News interview video and report (Oct. 17, 2026), including the FBI statement. Cover and in-post backgrounds: Michigan State Capitol file photos via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).
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