Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is under renewed fire over a Detroit animal shelter that a former employee called a "slaughterhouse", and his Republican opponent says the record proves Detroiters couldn't trust him with their pets.
The controversy centers on Detroit Animal Care and Control, the city shelter that fell under El-Sayed's authority when he served as Detroit's health director. A whistleblower lawsuit, a $63,000 city settlement, a federal court order blocking warrantless dog seizures, and state records showing thousands of animals euthanized have all resurfaced as El-Sayed campaigns for a U.S. Senate seat against Republican Mike Rogers.
Rogers seized on the record in a post on X. "This is sickening," Rogers wrote. "Abdul El-Sayed wants Michiganders to trust him with their families. Meanwhile, Detroiters couldn't even trust him with their pets."
Even a former press secretary to first lady Jill Biden flagged the story. Michael LaRosa posted: "I actually really really don't want to believe this. Can someone verify?"
Brittany Roberts began working at the Detroit Animal Care and Control shelter in March 2015, when the operation still sat under the Detroit Police Department. What she saw prompted her to file a whistleblower lawsuit in October 2015.
Roberts alleged animals died from inadequate food and medical care, were kept in filthy conditions, and suffered other violations of state law and department policy. She said she was demeaned, harassed, and ultimately fired after reporting the problems. FOX 2 Detroit reported at the time that Roberts called the shelter a "slaughterhouse" and alleged dogs were rarely euthanized properly.
Roberts described the conditions in stark terms:
"I was almost embarrassed with myself to be part of a team that played a role of the death of [so many dogs] in their cages. Every morning, we'd just walk around and see who was alive before we could even feed."
In July 2016, Detroit agreed to pay $63,000 to settle Roberts' lawsuit. The city did not admit wrongdoing, but the payout itself tells taxpayers something about the strength of the claims.
El-Sayed won the Michigan Democratic Senate primary against Rep. Haley Stevens, and the animal control record is now front and center in a general election fight that Republicans already viewed as favorable terrain.
The numbers behind the shelter's operations paint a grim picture. The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development placed DACC's live-release rate at 26% for 2015. Best Friends Animal Society, a national advocacy group, put it even lower, at 20%.
That same year, state records showed 1,988 dogs and 272 cats, a total of 2,260 animals, were euthanized at the shelter. Records obtained by The Daily Mail covering the broader period surrounding El-Sayed's tenure showed 4,680 dogs and cats euthanized in total.
In the first full calendar year that DACC operated under El-Sayed's Health Department, 1,056 dogs and 29 cats were euthanized. DACC did not publicly report those 2016 figures; The Daily Mail obtained them independently.
That a city agency failed to disclose its own euthanasia data raises an obvious question about transparency, one that matters more now that the man who oversaw the department wants a seat in the U.S. Senate. El-Sayed's campaign has also drawn scrutiny over a $75,000 payment to a Detroit pastor who endorsed him without disclosing the financial arrangement.
The shelter's problems extended beyond conditions inside the facility. In February 2016, a federal judge temporarily blocked Detroit Animal Control from seizing dogs from residents' homes without a warrant, consent, or emergency circumstances. The order came in response to a lawsuit brought by Detroit residents.
The city had moved Animal Control from the police department to El-Sayed's Health Department in October 2015. Then-Mayor Mike Duggan's office said the transfer was intended "in part to change the operation's culture." The mayor's office also cited inadequate shelters and Detroit's emergence from bankruptcy as major challenges, pointing to tight city budgets.
El-Sayed hired Melissa Miller as the new animal-control director in December 2015. The city scrapped the shelter's no-adoption policy and began working with rescue and foster organizations. DACC eventually moved into a larger facility donated by the Michigan Humane Society.
El-Sayed has not denied the shelter's early problems. In a 2024 podcast interview on Crooked Media, he described inheriting the operation:
"When I was the new director of the Detroit Health Department, I inherited a part of the job that I never trained for and never thought I would do, which is Detroit Animal Control. And it was a mess at the time, and I needed somebody who I could trust, who could come in and do right by the animals and right by the people of the city of Detroit. And Mel Miller was that person."
His campaign told Fox News Digital that El-Sayed "dramatically reduced animal euthanizations and reversed the Detroit Animal Control's abysmal save rate." The campaign said he raised frontline animal-care officer pay by 15%, fully staffed the operation, upgraded the facility, overhauled care protocols, and expanded partnerships with outside animal-welfare groups. The campaign claimed these changes eventually resulted in nearly 80% of animals being placed in homes.
By September 2016, local reporting placed DACC's live-release rate at 61%, up from 26% the year before. Miller stated in October 2016 that the figure had reached 62%, nearly triple the prior year's rate. Then-Mayor Duggan said the previous euthanasia rate had been "unacceptable" and called the improved numbers "more in line with national standards."
The improvement is real. But it arrived after thousands of animals were already dead, after a whistleblower was fired and had to sue to get $63,000 from the city, and after a federal judge had to step in to stop warrantless seizures. The question voters face is whether the turnaround proves leadership, or whether the crisis that made it necessary proves the opposite.
The animal control record is not the only vulnerability dogging El-Sayed's candidacy. He has faced questions about his ties to Nation of Islam figures and his refusal to cut ties with commentator Hasan Piker even as Jewish voters raised alarms.
House GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain, the top-ranking Michigan Republican in the House, spoke with Fox News Digital about the state's midterm matchups and sharply criticized El-Sayed. Rogers, meanwhile, has made clear he intends to keep the Detroit record at the center of the campaign.
Those Jewish Democratic defections already threaten El-Sayed's coalition in a state where margins matter. Adding an animal welfare controversy, complete with a whistleblower, a settlement, and a federal court order, does not make the math easier.
Voters will decide whether El-Sayed fixed a broken system or presided over one until the political cost got too high. In politics, the order matters as much as the outcome.
