In the fiercely contested U.S. Senate race in Michigan, Republican candidate Mike Rogers has launched attacks against his Democratic rival, Abdul El-Sayed, claiming the Democrat backs public safety measures that put citizens at risk, all while trying to project a tough-on-crime image.
In a September 23 social media post on X, Rogers asserted that El-Sayed “supports defunding the police and emptying prisons.” The post featured a campaign advertisement currently broadcasting on television and digital networks across the Detroit area. In the commercial, a concerned voter questions whether she can trust El-Sayed to protect her four children, reacting directly to archived footage of him discussing the release of individuals from correctional facilities.
“Is this guy for real?” the voter asks in the ad.
Abdul El-Sayed supports defunding the police and emptying prisons.
Michigan families can’t afford his pro-crime policies. pic.twitter.com/WVZV3UIEu0
— Mike Rogers (@MikeRogersForMI) September 23, 2026
Historical records show that El-Sayed did advocate for defunding the police several years ago and broadly favored reducing overall incarceration rates and sentence lengths. While Rogers’ post uses present-tense phrasing to imply these are El-Sayed’s current views, the accompanying ad relies on the past tense. Furthermore, throughout his current Senate run, El-Sayed has explicitly rejected defunding law enforcement, instead calling for increased financial support in specific areas of policing, and he has never advocated for completely emptying prisons.
Alyssa Brouillet, a spokesperson for the Rogers campaign, argued that El-Sayed is simply trying to walk back his previous rhetoric. “Now, his insulting disapproval of law enforcement is coming back to haunt him, so he’s lying to Michiganders,” Brouillet stated.
Current Senate Bid Rejects “Defund the Police” Stance
Following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, the “defund the police” movement gained significant traction among progressive Democrats. During that period, El-Sayed publicly advocated for defunding law enforcement on multiple occasions, arguing that traditional police agencies often abused power and failed to secure public safety. While some activists pushed to entirely dismantle modern policing, others proposed reallocating portions of police budgets toward social services.
“I believe that we do need to defund the police insofar as defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets,” El-Sayed explained during a June 2020 Detroit Public Radio appearance, adding that he favored “investing less in police.”
According to CNN, El-Sayed published roughly a dozen social media posts in 2020 centered on defunding the police, though those posts have since been deleted.
To substantiate their claims, the Rogers camp highlighted a 2024 podcast episode hosted by El-Sayed, where he argued for a “rethink [of] policing” and suggested shifting civic resources “away from punishment and toward public welfare.” During that same broadcast, he remarked, “Perhaps rather than invest so much money in buying military grade weapons to deploy into our streets, we might instead figure out how to deploy social workers to the scene of domestic disturbances.”
However, El-Sayed has recently described his approach to police funding as much more “nuanced.”
In a campaign video released September 19, he stated, “We’ve got to fund all of the things we need. For some problems, that is going to be a person with a gun.” He continued, “We’ve got to fund recruitment, retention, and retirement, so that we can actually get people from in the community.”
He has also maintained that armed officers do not need to handle every mental health emergency, advocating instead for federal funding directed toward specialized response teams and community-led violence prevention initiatives.
“No, Abdul El-Sayed does not support defunding the police,” countered Cole Wozniak, an El-Sayed campaign spokesperson, via email. “As he’s consistently said, Abdul believes we absolutely need to fund law enforcement to identify, prosecute, and protect communities from violent crime.”
The Rogers campaign also pointed to El-Sayed’s calls to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as proof of a desire to eliminate law enforcement entities. While El-Sayed has indeed advocated for dismantling ICE—arguing it promotes “paramilitary force on our streets”—he maintains that he still supports standard immigration and border enforcement operations.
No Plans Presented to Empty Prisons
The Rogers commercial incorporates a snippet from an August 2020 webinar titled “I Don’t Want to Die in Prison,” hosted by the University of Michigan’s Carceral State Project. The event featured El-Sayed alongside formerly incarcerated individuals discussing prison conditions before and amid the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside a report advocating for reduced inmate populations.
During the discussion, El-Sayed voiced support for lowering prison numbers given how rapidly the virus traveled through confined environments, arguing that such reductions should persist beyond the pandemic.
“Any and all efforts to get people out of jails and prisons and to keep people out of jails and prisons is policy that we need to be investing in,” El-Sayed said at the time. “Particularly right now, but this doesn’t end when the pandemic’s over, right? We shouldn’t have to have a global pandemic to force us to find our humanity. This should just be what we do because it’s the right thing to do.”
Although an organizer during the webinar stated that the referenced report viewed prison abolition as the “only humane response” to the crisis, El-Sayed himself never stated that he wanted to empty or completely eliminate prisons.
Throughout his current campaign, El-Sayed has spoken out against private prisons, arguing that incarceration should not be a profit-driven enterprise. He also champions investments in job training and mental health resources for former inmates to lower recidivism rates.
When pressed directly by a corrections officer at a September 19 town hall regarding whether he intended to release prisoners and scale back law enforcement presence, El-Sayed emphasized the need for increased funding to guarantee safety for both guards and inmates.
“So the idea of somehow pulling back on folks like you is ridiculous,” he told the officer. “You need more people. That’s how you keep things safe.”
Conclusion
Mike Rogers claimed that Abdul El-Sayed “supports defunding the police and emptying prisons.”
While El-Sayed did advocate for defunding police departments back in 2020 during nationwide social justice protests, his current Senate platform emphasizes boosting budgets for police recruitment, retention, mental health response teams, and violence prevention.
Similarly, while he argued for releasing inmates during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic to mitigate health risks—and suggested those population reductions continue afterward—he never called for the complete emptying of correctional facilities.
The accusation holds a kernel of truth, given El-Sayed’s past advocacy for budget diversions away from police and prisoner releases during a public health emergency. However, Rogers’ claim overlooks the candidate’s current campaign commitments to fund law enforcement and his explicit refusal to empty prisons.
This assessment rates the statement as Mostly False.