Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed often touts his work at Wayne County’s long-troubled Juvenile Detention Facility as a major feat in his public health career, claiming on the campaign trail and in interviews that he led its “rebuild” “from the studs” and “around the well-being of the kids.”
“We were able to turn it around, ultimately. Now, it’s a fantastically different facility than it was,” El-Sayed told the Washtenaw County Democratic Black Caucus forum in May.
On CBS News this month, El-Sayed claimed credit for raising salaries and wages at the juvenile jail to retain staff “to make sure that folks were safe in the facility ― both the youth that were there and the people working there ― by making sure that we could staff it appropriately.”
“I’ll let my record do the talking,” he boasted.
But public records, news reports, court filings and state actions at the Juvenile Detention Facility (JDF) from that time paint a more complicated picture of a chronically understaffed facility and a dangerous environment at the Hamtramck facility during a significant portion of El-Sayed’s tenure as Wayne County’s director of health, human and veteran services from December 2022 to April 2025.
El-Sayed was the county’s health chief when he led a public health emergency at the JDF for 10 weeks in the spring of 2023, describing it as in “shambles.” He made some substantial changes, according to Wayne County officials.
But in the months after county officials ended the emergency order at the facility, it remained filled with strife, with instances of serious mistreatment of youth, multiple sexual assaults, poor supervision and high staff turnover documented by state inspectors.
Wayne County Commissioner Monique Baker McCormick, D-Detroit, said issues at the Juvenile Detention Facility have existed for decades, “so no single individual can claim to have solved them in a short period of time.”
“Mr. El-Sayed may have contributed to improvements, but meaningful progress has been and continues to be a collective effort by county leadership, staff and the taxpayers who support these programs,” said Baker McCormick, a four-term commissioner who previously chaired the commission’s health and human services committee.
Fifteen days after the county lifted the emergency order in 2023, state regulators resumed their monitoring of the Hamtramck facility housing juvenile offenders on June 20 after a child was severely beaten on May 31 and a second sexual assault of a juvenile was reported on June 12.
By November 2023, the facility had lost its full license following repeated violations of regulations, including a lack of staff supervision, poor living conditions and children not receiving hygiene products to brush their teeth or recreation time. State investigators said a staff shortage led to workers not interfering in physical assaults, kids not receiving initial health assessments and not getting meals or regular schooling.
A prior review by The Detroit News of 60 violations compiled by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services between April 2023 and 2024 blamed JDF staff for incidents like hitting back at a child after a child struck a staff member, improperly restraining a child and not taking a child to get stitches for four hours after he was cut by a metal piece from a face mask.
In one instance, a staffer at the JDF allegedly slammed a child’s head onto a table because he was throwing a basketball at the ceiling of the gym.
Multiple lawsuits have also alleged misconduct at the JDF, including one filed in May by a teenager with special needs who was sexually assaulted in April 2024 by a staffer later sentenced to prison time.
Severe problems at the JDF persisted through 2023 and 2024 until the center closed and juvenile detainees were moved to a new complex.
The county didn’t declare another public health emergency at the JDF in that time, as El-Sayed remained in his position through April 2025, when he stepped down to run for the U.S. Senate. He’s now locked in a nasty primary battle for the Democratic nomination against U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens of Birmingham that’s among the most closely watched contests in the nation.
El-Sayed explains work at juvenile jail
El-Sayed this month defended his work at the JDF and how he speaks about it, saying he spent every day at the facility for more than two months in the spring of 2023 to ensure that conditions there were meeting a standard “that kept the kids safe,” despite the “massive” overcrowding and understaffing.
El-Sayed suggested that he did what he set out to do, including improving the quality of food, opening additional space at the facility to separate youth by charge and age, and engaging a local provider to get mental health services to youth on site.
He said he hired a new medical director, reorganized health care at the facility, and raised salaries and wages by 35% to retain staff. Other key changes, he said, guaranteed every detainee the ability to bathe as needed and fresh, clean clothes, which were not being offered when he came in.
“We declared a public health state of emergency to fundamentally rebuild a lot of the operations in the facility to make sure the kids had their basic needs and were as safe as could be in that facility,” El-Sayed told The News in a statement.
“While the work still continues and the structural failures that have been imposed on Wayne County continue to pose a challenge, I’m proud of the work that we did, jumping into a challenge and trying to take it head on.”
El-Sayed refused to answer other questions on the record, including why the county never declared another public health emergency at the juvenile jail when overcrowding and conditions got worse again.
His reference to “structural failures” was a dig at the state of Michigan, which El-Sayed and other county officials blamed for the persistent overcrowding at the JDF.
The facility was intended for short stays. But after the COVID-19 pandemic, many kids languished there for months due to the state’s failures to find placements for youth ordered by a judge to residential treatment centers. The center in Hamtramck was built to house about 80 juvenile offenders but was at double its capacity for months, at times holding up to 150 teenagers.
The state welfare department at the time in 2023 acknowledged a shortage of staff at residential facilities in Michigan and available beds were contributing to the problem, but stressed that each county maintained responsibility for the youth in their county.
El-Sayed’s former boss, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, this month praised his handling of the public health emergency in 2023, telling The News that El-Sayed had stepped up at the JDF and advocated for expanded placements for the youth to receive treatment. Evans has endorsed El-Sayed in the Senate primary.
“To understand how important this is, you have to understand that Abdul stepped in to solve a problem that he had no role in the creation of,” Evans said in a statement.
“The vast improvement of operations that we have today stems from that leadership back then.”
Alisha Bell, a Detroit Democrat and chair of the Wayne County Commission, said El-Sayed’s effort at the JDF was “admirable” and that how he’s describing his work there now is “absolutely true.”
“He came in from the pot to the frying pan because we were going through a very difficult time upon his arrival,” Bell said. “As the director, he was helpful in making sure that we got our JDF back into line as to what it should be.”
El-Sayed, whose salary with the county was nearly $279,000 a year in 2024, continued to serve as a consultant for the health department after he launched his Senate campaign in April 2025. County spokesman Matt Allen said El-Sayed’s consulting contract was not to exceed $72,000 and ended Dec. 23, 2025.
Public health emergency response to crisis
El-Sayed’s role in the public health emergency order at the JDF in March 2023 included establishing and leading an on-site incident command center, according to news reports.
County intervention followed an incident in which a 12-year-old boy was beaten and sexually assaulted by a group of boys that officials blamed on poor supervision by staff.
Around that time, state inspectors on-site found deplorable living conditions at the facility, with feces “smeared and dried” on pod walls and air vents, as well as other bodily fluids, overflowing toilets, and trash in bedrooms, and other cleanliness issues that went unaddressed for weeks after being reported to administrators.
After a month, the center did see a dip in overcrowding as the county hired more staff and moved some detainees to other jails or treatment centers, which El-Sayed at the time attributed to a reduction in potentially dangerous incidents at the facility. He described the change as “night and day from what it had been in the past.”
“We’re not all the way there, and we’re still in a state of emergency for a reason, but we’re making a lot of progress, and I’m really proud of the progress we’re making,” El-Sayed told reporters in April 2023.
The emergency order allowed the county to tap $10 million to address the JDF’s needs, bypass “red tape” to more swiftly hire new staff and contractors, and expand and restructure space within the facility to separate juveniles by age and juvenile charge, which is considered best practice, the county has said.
As the county lifted the emergency order, El-Sayed told The News in early June 2023 that the county had “fundamentally changed the experience of a young person in the facility,” with juveniles there having daily access to showers, hygiene products and clean underwear and spending less time locked in their rooms.
The county hired 54 new staff, reduced the number of detainees 16%, opened a wing to reduce the number of youth per pod, and even ordered tablets tailored for use in a detention facility for the teens’ educational and entertainment purposes, El-Sayed said at the time.
“While there’s a lot more to improve and build upon, we feel that the work we’ve done during the emergency has provided a solid foundation for that work,” El-Sayed said at the time.
But the state intervenes again
State officials initially agreed that conditions at the JDF had improved and ended their 24-7 monitoring at the site as of June 5, 2023.
But the JDF again went under state supervision June 20 following another incident, and in July the facility’s population was again at 140 ― above the level that led county officials to declare the public health emergency in March 2023.
By November, the facility had lost its full license and was operating under a six-month provisional license due to repeated violations documented in a report sent to the county in September.
That report substantiated complaints of sewage backups at the facility, inconsistent provision of showers, recreation and toothbrushes, untreated lice and missed doses of medication. The report also cited the lack of sufficient staff to intervene in physical assaults, provide timely meals, schooling, initial health assessments or recreation.
Some of the violations were documented prior to or early in the March 2023 to May 2023 period after El-Sayed had co-signed the public health emergency order on-site.
Several violations flagged to administrators weren’t addressed despite repeated requests, including feces smeared on the walls of a living space called a pod, which an inspector had pointed out on March 23. An administrator told the inspector it had been cleaned the next day, but was still there when the inspector checked again on March 30 and April 20.
The state analysis conveyed that a child reported that another resident had sexually assaulted him in a medical room when it was left unsecured by a staff member, whom the county suspended. The child told a different staff member about it, but that staffer told investigators he did not report it because he had no proof and considered it a rumor.
The kids were denied food for poor behavior and did not have sheets on their mattresses, the report found.
“The agency does not have a sufficient number of administrative, medical, supervisory, or direct care staff to provide for the basic physical needs of each youth as well as safety needs of the youth, resources, clean and secure environment and access to health personnel upon entry and throughout their stay,” Licensing Consultant Venus Decker wrote in the September 2023 report.
Corrective action plans for the JDF obtained through a public records request show that the county was still working to address violations in October and November of 2023 and May 2024, including issues related to cleanliness, hygiene products, late health screenings for detainees and insufficient staff.
The records show facility operators blamed the noncompliance in part on a high turnover in staff and changes in administration and supervisors that left previous efforts “unsuccessful.”
Problems persisted into 2024
Months later, both the county and the state said the conditions had improved. A second six-month provisional license for the JDF was recommended by staff in May 2024.
Former JDF staff told The News in the spring of 2024 that understaffing, overcrowding, a lack of training for employees and an inability to discipline juveniles at the facility continued to plague the center, with sexual assaults, fights and poor supervision still rampant.
Three of those employees, who quit within six months due to the hostile environment, said the staff regularly got hit with wet shirts and towels and had spoiled milk mixed with bodily fluids thrown at them. They also told The News they got rushed by the kids, sprayed with fire extinguishers and were injured while trying to break up fights.
Two former nurses at the facility sued the county in December 2023, alleging they were fired for bringing up concerns to a supervisor about how the medical issues were handled at the JDF. They claimed that medications were improperly being disseminated to the youth and that some medications given out were expired, including EpiPens used for allergic reactions, according to the filing.
In recent months, El-Sayed has spoken very differently about the conditions at the JDF, often saying he “rebuilt” the center and raised salaries to retain and hire staff. He has said in interviews, candidate forums and on social media that he learned about criminal justice from his work at the JDF.
“I had to rebuild the juvenile detention facility, working alongside law enforcement,” he said last month on CNN.
Outside an ICE detention facility in New Jersey, El-Sayed spoke about how he had to “rebuild” the JDF when he was health director.
“A health director should never have to do that, but it was because of a failure of a whole system,” he said.
At an April forum hosted by the Council of Black Pastors of Detroit & Vicinity, he said tackling the JDF “catastrophe” was one of the “hardest things I’ve ever had to do professionally.”
“Had to rebuild it from the ground up, declared a public health state of emergency and started rebuilding the whole thing, soup to nuts,” El-Sayed said.
mburke@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: El-Sayed overstates claim he ‘rebuilt’ troubled Wayne Co. juvenile jail
Reporting by Melissa Nann Burke and Kara Berg, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Melissa Nann Burke and Kara Berg, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
