In a video that has gone viral on social media, the FBI and Michigan state police can be seen using a battering ram to force open the door at a home of University of Michigan students. On April 23, U-M students and recent graduates were detained in police vehicles and/or handcuffed in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Canton. Their homes were ransacked and electronics were confiscated. All of the nine students targeted were released without charge.

Officially the cops were investigating “incidents of vandalism” — a misdemeanor normally handled by the local police department. But these weren’t just any U-M students. All of them had been involved in Palestine solidarity activism on campus. At least one of the students is a member of the Graduate Employees Organization. 

GEO stated on its website: “We strongly condemn the actions taken today and all past and present repression of political activism. We urge University of Michigan administrators, the Regents of the University of Michigan and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to end their campaign against students and stop putting graduate workers in harm’s way.” (geo3550.org)

Attorney General Nessel has been heading a year-long investigation into allegations of vandalism — no more than spray painting pro-Palestine slogans and breaking windows — of the homes and vehicles of U-M officials. Nessel collaborated with President Donald Trump’s FBI in this brutal raid against young activists in their homes.

Nessel, a Democrat, was the attorney for the Michigan plaintiffs in the lawsuit that won marriage equality in the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. It might have been expected that she would be reasonably progressive when it came to civil rights or civil liberties.

But as Liz Jacob, attorney at the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice explained: “Dana Nessel frames herself as a democratic bulwark against the Trump Administration, yet has demonstrated continuous collaboration with Trump’s federal government to repress the popular movement for Palestinian liberation. Nessel’s irresponsible conduct has already endangered Michigan residents, putting them in the crosshairs of the Trump Administration’s anti-immigrant and anti-democratic assaults. 

“On April 6 at the Detroit airport, federal agents questioned and harassed Amir Makled, an Arab-American [National Lawyers Guild] lawyer representing one of the U-M Encampment 11. This joint escalation by Nessel, the FBI, state and local police is a clear attempt to intimidate protestors and attack their constitutional right to freedom of speech.” (tahrirumich.org, April 24)

The Sugar Law Center is representing two of the students who were attacked on April 23.

The U-M 11, arrested for participating in the Palestine Solidarity Encampment in the Spring last year, were charged with felonies and misdemeanors by Nessel’s office in September 2024. As U-M’s Tahrir Coalition pointed out, “These charges bypass local Prosecutor Eli Savit in an effort to secure harsher criminal penalties following previous felony charges, ongoing academic disciplinary actions and hiring bans.”

The raids on students’ homes, the detention of attorney Makled and the steep charges the U-M 11 are facing are part of a nationwide bipartisan campaign of state repression aimed at squelching what has become known as the “student intifada.”

But students are keeping alive the popular slogan: “Disclose! Divest! We will not stop! We will not rest!” On April 23, the same day as the Michigan cop raids, Yale University students protested a visit by far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. They had erected a short-lived encampment the night before.