Michigan's DEM AG Under Fire After Armed Agents Raid Homes of Palestine Defenders

[IrishBubbaLiberal]

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https://www.commondreams.org/news/michigan-raids-palestine

Michigan's Democratic AG Under Fire After Armed Agents Raid Homes of Palestine Defenders

"We are totally convinced that, but for their viewpoints, these students would not have been targeted," said one attorney.

APRIL 23, 2025

Federal and local law enforcement officers smashed their way into the Michigan homes of pro-Palestine student organizers on Wednesday in what the state attorney general's office said was a vandalism probe—but critics called an attack on dissent against Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza.

Backed by FBI agents, officers broke into homes in Ypsilanti, Canton, and Ann Arbor on Wednesday morning. Video uploaded to social media by Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, showed officers battering down the door to a Ypsilanti house before others rushed into the home barking commands with guns drawn and pointed at the residents.

"No search warrant was provided," someone says in the video as the invaders crashed through the homes' locked front door. People in the house said their phones and other electronic devices and possessions, including vehicles, were taken.

MLivereported that people inside the home were handcuffed and moved to the porch outside before being released about 15 minutes later.

The pro-Palestine advocacy group TAHRIR Coalition rallied supporters to two of the homes. Video posted on YouTube shows members of a crowd that gathered outside the Ypsilanti house taunting the agents as they came in and out of the home.

According toDrop Site News, Ann Arbor police said that the investigation involves "reported crimes" committed in the city and other jurisdictions.

An FBI spokesperson confirmed bureau agents took part in the raids, which he described vaguely as "law enforcement activities."

Danny Wimmer, a spokesperson for Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, told the Detroit Free Press that the raids "were not related to protest activity on the campus of the University of Michigan," but were "in furtherance of our investigation into multijurisdictional acts of vandalism."

"There is no immigration enforcement angle to the execution of these search warrants," Wimmer added.

(……skipped……)

According to CAIR:

This recent escalation comes on the heels of prior arrests and charges brought by the Michigan attorney general's office against University of Michigan student protesters for minor, nonviolent infractions—including misdemeanor trespassing—during peaceful demonstrations advocating for Palestinian human rights, an end to the genocide in Gaza, and for the University of Michigan to divest from companies complicit in the occupation and violence.
After Nessel announced criminal charges—some of them felonies—for 11 University of Michigan Palestine defenders last September, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress, said the attorney general was "going to set a precedent, and it's unfortunate that a Democrat made that move."

"We've had the right to dissent, the right to protest. We've done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs," Tlaib said. "But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs."

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[Raven123]

1. Lots of accusations. Will watch for facts to be revealed

[JohnSJ]

4. This presents what was actually going on, and that it was motivated by vandalism on the UOM.

https://www.jta.org/2025/04/24/united-states/authorities-raid-michigan-homes-that-advocates-say-belong-to-pro-palestinian-activists

[druidity33]

6. That's what they say...

Rocks through a Regents window is the accusation. Any proof any of these people had anything at all to do with that? Or were they writing in chalk on the sidewalk in front of the Regents house during the protest? I had a friend that was briefly charged with vandalism when he wrote "YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE" in chalk in front of the University President's home... on a public sidewalk.

[JohnSJ]

2. Interesting. I am wondering why they didn't mention what those raids were about, because they had

nothing to do with protesting, but the vandalism that occurred on the University of Michigan, including of a Jewish regent of the University of Michigan, and the brief comment about the vandalism just brushed it aside as though it was not credible.

Here is what the Michigan Attorney General said:

"The raids — at homes in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Canton — were tied to a vandalism investigation and not to immigration issues or on-campus demonstrations against Israel that have taken place over the last year and a half, according to a spokesman for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.

“These search warrants were not investigative of protest activity on the campus of the University of Michigan nor the Diag encampment,” the spokesman, Danny Wimmer, said in a statement, referring to the location of Michigan’s pro-Palestinian student encampment last year. “Today’s search warrants are in furtherance of our investigation into multijurisdictional acts of vandalism.”

A viral video showed officers breaking down the door of a home. Pro-Palestinian advocates said the homes all belonged to students or former students at the University of Michigan who have engaged in pro-Palestinian activism."

Of course that would bring into question what actually occurred, and we don't want to have that.

https://www.jta.org/2025/04/24/united-states/authorities-raid-michigan-homes-that-advocates-say-belong-to-pro-palestinian-activists

"The raids — during which some people were detained but not arrested — follow acts of vandalism at the homes of members of the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents, whom pro-Palestinian activists want to cut university ties with Israel.

In December a group of protesters threw rocks through the window of Jordan Acker, a Jewish regent, while he and his children were home in the heavily Jewish Detroit suburb of Huntington Woods, and left pro-Palestinian graffiti on his car. Non-Jewish regents at the university have also been targeted by protesters in their own homes.

Acker declined to comment on the raids Wednesday. He previously called the targeting of his own home “terrorism” and “Klan-like.”

[travelingthrulife]

8. So they behave like vandals to arrest vandals?

[JohnSJ]

9. So you are assuming that the AG is lying, and the Common Dreams author is being upfront with

all the facts, and this was all a random persecution by a "Jewish" AG against Palestinians.

[Jose Garcia]

3. I love the part where they point out that Michigan"s AG is Jewish

What a bunch of antisemitic trash.

[JohnSJ]

5. You are darn right it is.

https://www.jta.org/2025/04/24/united-states/authorities-raid-michigan-homes-that-advocates-say-belong-to-pro-palestinian-activists

[lindysalsagal]

7. Article doesn't say if they're US citizens. If they are, it's a new ball game. Using police against its own citizens.

[DSandra]

10. Foolish leftists who stayed at home or otherwise refused to vote for Harris

Protest votes for the most important office in the country are not the way to get change. They are also paying the price of trivializing a do or die election.

[questionseverything]

11. This article should be titled," how democrats lose the next election "