2018 Video Shows El-Sayed Backed Driver's Licenses for Illegal Immigrants

A 2018 campaign interview has resurfaced showing Abdul El-Sayed, now a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, arguing that denying driver's licenses to illegal immigrants amounts to discrimination.

The clip, from a Detroit PBS interview dated July 19, 2018, was unearthed and reported by Fox News and the New York Post. At the time, El-Sayed was running for Michigan governor, a race he ultimately lost in the Democratic primary.

"We've got to make sure that in this state we are not discriminating against documentation status," El-Sayed said in the interview. "Right now, if you're undocumented, you don't get access to a driver's license. You're stuck."

He went further, saying undocumented immigrants are cut off from "a lot of the basic things that the state offers everybody else," calling that "ridiculous" and saying Michigan needed "to stop discriminating that way."

Why the resurfaced clip matters

El-Sayed is now running for the U.S. Senate seat in Michigan, and the eight-year-old comments are the latest data point on how he'd approach immigration policy if elected. Neither Fox News nor the New York Post reported any recent statement from El-Sayed reaffirming or walking back the 2018 position, and there's no indication in either report that he's addressed the resurfaced video directly.

Hans von Spakovsky, an election law expert with Advancing American Freedom, told Fox News Digital that driver's licenses function as de facto national ID in the U.S. because the country has no federal identification card like many European nations.

"Issuing driver's licenses to aliens will help them in all the instances where a license is needed, from opening bank accounts to all types of other transactions," Spakovsky said. He also noted that I-9 employment eligibility forms typically require little more than a license to satisfy documentation requirements.

Spakovsky's broader argument is that limiting access to licenses, bank accounts and housing is a deliberate enforcement tool. "The key to getting aliens to self-deport would be to ensure that they cannot rent apartments, open bank accounts and take all of the other steps necessary to live and work in the U.S.," he said. "Providing them driver's licenses is a huge step in allowing them to easily live and work in the United States."

Attrition-through-enforcement, denying the documentation infrastructure that makes daily life workable for people in the country illegally, has been a mainstream immigration-restriction strategy for years. Spakovsky states it plainly rather than dressing it up.

The other side of the argument, stated fairly

El-Sayed's underlying point in 2018 wasn't about legal status generally. It was narrower: people already living and working in a state, regardless of how they got there, still drive to jobs, drop kids at school and need insurance. Proponents of license access for undocumented immigrants argue it improves road safety by ensuring more drivers are tested and insured, and that it doesn't itself confer legal immigration status.

Whether that outweighs the concerns Spakovsky raises about licenses functioning as a backdoor to other benefits is a genuine policy disagreement.

Context

The interview is from 2018. What's new is that it's circulating now, in the middle of a competitive Senate primary, as opposition researchers and conservative outlets dig through El-Sayed's record.

The New York Post's writeup adds context the Fox News version leaves thinner: it notes El-Sayed's broader platform, including Medicare for All, opposition to corporate tax carve-outs, and tuition-free higher education, and quotes him telling Fox News Digital directly that he expects Democrats nationally to trend toward more expansive government programs, comparing the moment to Zohran Mamdani's rise in New York. That places the license comments inside a consistent governing philosophy rather than as an isolated soundbite.

El-Sayed has publicly rejected being labeled "progressive" or "far-left," according to the Post, even as he's appeared at rallies with Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

There's no reporting yet on whether El-Sayed still holds the 2018 position on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, or how he'd vote on federal legislation touching state ID standards if elected to the Senate. His campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the resurfaced clip, according to Fox News. El-Sayed faces Rep. Haley Stevens in the state's primary, with the winner advancing to the general election.