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Controversial socialist Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is facing fresh scrutiny after it was revealed that his close relative is a far-left professor who was arrested on a felony charge last year for her role in an anti-ICE riot.
Eman Abdelhadi is a polarizing figure. She works as an associate professor at the University of Chicago’s Department of Comparative Human Development, and has a years-long history of landing in the national spotlight for radical activism and inflammatory statements.
She’s also El-Sayed’s half sister.
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A mugshot of Eman Adbelhadi from Oct. 3, 2025. (Cook County Sheriff’s Office)
Last fall, as leftist zealots spent months protesting, sometimes violently, outside an ICE detention facility in suburban Chicago, Abdelhadi was booked after allegedly spitting on an Illinois state trooper. She was charged on Oct. 3 with two counts of aggravated battery to a government employee, a Class 3 felony, and two counts of resisting/obstructing peace, a Class A misdemeanor.
A day before her arrest, she appeared on a podcast called “Movement Memos,” which is affiliated with the far-left publication Truthout. During that interview, she recalled her previous experiences at the riots at the Broadview facility.
“These people are terrorizing our communities and they’re setting up shop,” she said, referring to federal immigration officials. “I mean, in Broadview, ICE has been setting up shop in our backyard. Just brazenly taking up community resources to terrorize this very same community.”
“And so it felt really important to join protesters out there to say, not in our city, not in our name, not in our backyard,” she added.
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Abdelhadi later expressed her frustration at establishment Democrats and claimed there is no wiggle room to accept centrist liberals in the left-wing.
“There’s no center left,” she said. “You’re either resisting or you’re complicit.”
Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed speaks to supporters at an election-night rally at the Majestic Theatre in Detroit, Mich., on Aug. 4, 2026. (Getty Images)
On April 17, 2025, Abdelhadi celebrated on X El-Sayed’s announcement that he would seek elected office in his bid for Senate in Michigan.
“The feeling when you think you’ve accomplished a lot but then your older brother runs for senate!!! In all seriousness—Abdul is fighting for healthcare, housing, and an economy that serves people over oligarchs. I am a proud little sister,” she posted at the time to social media.
The pair share a mother — Fatten Elkomy — who works as a psychiatric nurse practitioner and lives in Missouri. That’s where Abelhadi was raised, while El-Sayed was raised by his Egyptian-born father and American stepmother in the Detroit suburbs.
A profile of the candidate confirms Elkomy is El-Sayed’s mother.
Abdelhadi’s familial relationship with Elkomy is the subject of an independent film which explores her journey of coming out as queer in her traditionally Muslim family.
Members of the Democratic Socialists of America gather outside a Trump owned building during a May Day rally in New York City in 2019. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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Digital reached out to Abdelhadi and El-Sayed’s campaign, but did not hear back by time of publication.
Before her high-profile arrest, in July 2025, Abdelhadi made headlines for cursing out her employer at the Socialism 2025 conference. That conference is the largest annual gathering of collectivist leftists and describes itself as bringing thousands of “radical activists from around the country to take part in discussions about social movements, abolition, Marxism, decolonization, working-class history, and the debates and strategies for organizing today.”
“F— the University of Chicago, it’s evil, you know it’s a colonial landlord. Like, why would I put any of my political energy into this space? I kind of had a little bit of disdain for people who spent their time doing that,” she said.
However, Abdelhadi reasoned that teaching there was her only chance to have any power.
Police confront demonstrators during a protest outside the immigration processing and detention facility Oct. 11, 2025, in Broadview, Illinois. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
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“Turns out, I work at one of the biggest employers in the city of Chicago. I work at a place that is a landlord, a healthcare provider, a police force, f— that s—, but, they are, and a place where I have access to thousands of people that I could potentially organize… actually, this is where I need to build power. That’s possible structural leverage,” she said.
Despite her rant against the school and her subsequent criminal charges, the University of Chicago still employs Abdelhadi.
Abdelhadi also has a history of anti-White social media posts.
“Someday I’m going to make a twitter account called profoundwhiteguy and it will be the wisdoms of a basic white boy who thinks he’s wise,” she said in a 2017 post.
Twitch streamer Hasan Piker appeared on the campaign trail with Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo)
“Yesterday at the airport, 2 white women sat at the gate then boarded our plane without masks. No one intervened. I kept thinking about how Muslims have been thrown off planes for speaking Arabic or ‘looking scary’. But these women actually risking our lives were left alone,” she said in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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“It never ceases to amaze me that white people, statistically the safest members of our society, are also the most fearful,” she said in 2023.
Digital reached out to the Cook County Clerk of Court, but a status update on Abdelhadi’s case was not immediately available and is reportedly still pending.
