US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed calls for protection of transgender prisoners’ safety
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a US Senate candidate in Michigan, called for prisoners to be protected from violence in Detroit on October 21, 2026, while answering a question about transgender women in men’s prisons. His response appears in the organisers’ recording, starting at approximately 51:28.
As CBS Detroit reported, the event with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse took place at Detroit’s Norwood, which hosted an exhibition of released case files. An attendee asked El-Sayed about sexual violence against transgender women in men’s facilities and support for those prisoners.
El-Sayed linked dangerous conditions to insufficient investment in safety, describing decisions that expose people to danger as “unfortunate choices”. He said violence should be prevented and the state must protect everyone in custody who cannot independently secure their own safety.
The candidate did not outline specific measures or clarify whether he supported transferring transgender women to women’s prisons. That omission was noted by Breitbart in its October 22 report.
His campaign platform supports patients and doctors making healthcare decisions, including gender-affirming care. He also opposes criminalising medicines or cutting healthcare providers’ funding to restrict treatment.
President Donald Trump’s administration takes a different position: his January 20, 2025, executive order directed that transgender women not be housed in women’s federal facilities. The White House justified the policy as protecting women’s rights, privacy and safety.
A separate dispute concerns gender-affirming medical care in federal prisons. On October 21, the US Supreme Court denied the administration’s emergency application in Trump v. Kingdom, leaving a court order blocking restrictions on that care in place while litigation continues. This was neither a final ruling on the merits nor a decision on where prisoners should be housed.
Urania previously covered the court dispute over housing transgender women in Oregon’s men’s prisons and the Trump administration’s application in the medical care case.
Photo: Conlan Houston / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Archive photograph from October 22, 2025; resized and converted to WebP.
