Eight student activists in Michigan face decades in prison for trying to get their university to divest from genocide. It is clear the goal is not justice but terrorizing the Palestine solidarity movement into silence and crushing political dissent.
Originally published in Electronic Intifada.
A recent federal indictment against eight activists in Michigan could have critical implications for pro-Palestine activism across the US.
On 10 June, the FBI undertook an aggressive raid of the homes of individuals involved in University of Michigan Palestine solidarity activism. The raid, which included the use of armored military vehicles and agents visibly brandishing weapons, was conducted in collaboration with local and state departments, including the University of Michigan police.
As reported in Mondoweiss, one of the homes raided on 10 June in the city of Ypsilanti had been previously raided by the FBI in April 2025 “as part of the crackdown on the campus solidarity movement.”
Eight defendants, all in their twenties, among them current and former students and one university employee, have since been indicted by the Justice Department on multiple counts.
They have come to be known as the Michigan 8, and their arrest followed what FBI director Kash Patel called a “thorough” investigation.
“FBI Detroit and our partners pursued a thorough, detailed investigation of this case – and subjects have been charged for their alleged role in conspiracies to transmit threats in interstate and foreign commerce,” Patel wrote in a 10 June post on X praising the raid and indictment.
What’s at stake
The charges vary but ultimately hinge upon a sensationalist narrative crafted by the US Department of Justice about the attempt to get the University of Michigan to divest from institutions complicit in Israel’s genocide and military occupation.
“After the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, the defendants and unindicted conspirators orchestrated detailed plans to threaten University of Michigan leaders, law enforcement and businesses with coordinated criminal acts,” the introduction to the indictment reads. “Their goal included forcing the University of Michigan and other businesses to sever all perceived ties with the state of Israel.”
A deep-dive into the text of the indictment, however, not only reveals an attempt to criminalize the Michigan 8 but a broader targeting of the pro-Palestine movement.
The claim that activists “must escalate, mobilize and organize to demand divestment by any means necessary” is also offered as a self-evident quote bolstering the indictment’s allegations.
As Mondoweiss’ Yarden Katz and Stephen M. Ward argue, the bulk of actions recounted in the indictment amount to property damage (to which, it is crucial to note, the defendants have pleaded not guilty) of the workplace and residence of individuals who manage university investments, companies that provide military products and services to Israel, and Zionist organizations – that is, against institutions and individuals clearly aligned with financial, military and ideological support for Israel’s genocide.
No one was directly harmed through these actions, yet the indictment “paints these actions as a form of anti-Semitic terrorism,” Katz and Ward write, despite it being “clear the actions have nothing to do with anti-Jewish racism or terrorism.”
The charges faced by all or some of the Michigan 8 include “Conspiracy to Transmit Threats in Interstate and Foreign Commerce,” which occurs “when two or more individuals communicate about threatening or injuring another person” across US state lines; “Destruction of Property to Prevent Seizure” and “Conspiracy to Tamper with a Witness.”
The charges reveal not just what’s at stake for individuals, who could face decades in prison, but the logic of criminalization at play.
Broader strategy
It is tempting to focus on how the seriousness of the charges faced by the Michigan 8 is belied by the absurdity of the indictment’s language. But to do so would be to ignore the federal government’s broader strategy.
According to Suzanne Adely, President of the National Lawyers Guild, this strategy amounts to the wholesale criminalization of Palestine activism – and ultimately, all protest and dissent – by casting a pall of suspicion on legal speech and conduct.
Adely told The Electronic Intifada that the language of the indictment “is written in a way that takes common acts of civil society, of protest, of movements for justice, and makes them sound criminal. When I read this indictment and look at, say, the Prairieland indictment, it’s amazing how loaded the language is.”
She was referring to a case last month where eight individuals were indicted in connection with a protest outside of an ICE detention facility in Prairieland, Texas, that took place on 4 July 2025. In a clear threat to progressive movements the nation over, their sentences – condemning the accused to jail terms of 30 to 100 years in prison – were justified by reference to legally protected actions such as distributing leftist zines and being in an anarchist book club.
Adely said that the sensationalist treatment of innocuous words and phrases such as “divestment,” “escalation” and “autonomous” (which simply means self-directed), and normal practices such as using encrypted services (the government’s case against the Prairieland defendants included the use of Signal) shows an attempt to criminalize normal practices.
The indictment of the Michigan 8 also includes references to Signal as well as the encrypted Cloud document service CryptPad. This is intended, Adely said, to short-circuit adjudication, so that the very usage of political language or encryption technologies is “argued to be proof of criminal behavior.”
“If you look at these different cases,” Adely said, “you’ll see similar moves: words that are part of everyday actions are described as criminal. Everything is described as though it’s part of a vast conspiracy.”
Whether in Prairieland or Michigan or Minnesota, she added, “the point is to terrorize people into silence.”
Grotesque inversion
Relying as it does on a grotesque inversion whereby student activists engaged in protest are recast as ominous threats whose advocacy alone warrants the full violence of the state, the FBI’s and the University of Michigan’s collaborative repression of the Michigan 8 encapsulates the character of the merciless assault on students and faculty playing out across the US. Some understand what is happening now to be the result of an ongoing backlash to the encampments that challenged institutional complicity in genocide in 2024-2025.
Student activists had set up an encampment at the University of Michigan on 22 April 2024, but police tore it down on the orders of University of Michigan officials the following month in a confrontation that resulted in the arrest of at least four activists.
In a statement justifying the dismantling of the encampment, then University of Michigan President Santa J. Ono wrote: “To be clear, there is no place for violence or intimidation at the University of Michigan. Such behavior will not be tolerated, and individuals will be held accountable.”
University of Michigan officials did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
“Ever since the encampment, the university, in collaboration with the state and federal forces, has been committing violence and repressive attacks on pro-Palestine forces, repeatedly, in one form or another,” Aklesia Maereg, a graduate student worker at the University of Michigan, told The Electronic Intifada.
Another organizer and recent graduate of the University of Michigan, who asked for anonymity for fear of possible repercussions, agreed. Invoking a previous raid on the homes of student activists undertaken by the FBI in collaboration with the University of Michigan in April 2025, the activist told The Electronic Intifada, “the fact that the state already tried very similar charges in 2025 and those were dropped, and now we’re seeing a retake at the federal level to re-instill some sort of discouragement, of fear in organizers or protestors, I think it’s a very directed attack.”
The anonymous organizer said the indictment was an assault on free speech.
“The federal government and the University of Michigan have gone after students in their 20s and decided to galvanize county police, University of Michigan police, state police and federal agents to send large, armored vehicles to the city of Ypsilanti … We’re using all of these resources to go after, essentially, our free speech. I would want the general public to be aware of how law enforcement is being weaponized.”
“The work never stops”
The University of Michigan’s repeated collaboration in the police and federal repression of its students reveals how fundamentally corrupt the core of corporatized academic culture truly is: violently assaulting and arresting the very students the university ostensibly exists to serve is seen as preferable to divesting from military occupation and possibly the most well-documented genocide in history, or simply countenancing activism for a free Palestine at minimum.
In addition, prioritizing its bloody investments in genocide above even the physical safety or speech rights of students creates a natural political affinity between the University of Michigan and the authoritarian Trump administration.
But the outcome of political repression is neither certain nor absolute: Despite being kidnapped and incarcerated by ICE in collaboration with Columbia University and facing the threat of deportation for his role in the encampments, Mahmoud Khalil has now launched a historic lawsuit against the Trump administration, several senior officials including White House adviser Stephen Miller and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with the conservative Heritage Foundation and Zionist organizations such as Betar USA and Canary Mission.
And on 13 August, a federal judge in Massachusetts tossed out a Trump administration lawsuit against Harvard University that portrayed campus activism for Palestine as anti-Semitic harassment. Though Harvard’s complicity in the repression of its students must not be overlooked, the ruling is a blow to Trump’s broader project of attacking higher education by criminalizing student protests for Palestine. A recent bombshell whistleblower complaint alleges that the Trump administration “predetermined” the findings of its antisemitism investigations into Harvard, Columbia and Brown universities to advance “political priorities” rather than civil rights.
For Suzanne Adely, it is crucial that activists not internalize the risk-aversion that legal repression is meant to inspire.
“We need to be smart about safety and keep having serious conversations about security protocol,” Adely said. “We have to be prepared to fight back legally. But we also shouldn’t soften our discourse when it comes to protected speech. We need to be able to say that Palestinians have a right to resist. There is nothing illegal about saying Hamas or Hizballah are resistance groups.”
If convicted, the combined charges faced by the Michigan 8 amount to years, possibly even decades in prison. But resistance continues. Supporters of the Michigan 8, for example, have organized a fundraiser for legal fees that has raised over $125,000 to date.
“We need to continue being in community with each other. We need to show up for each other and let what’s happening be more fuel for the fire for a free Palestine, to abolish ICE, for divestment. Free Palestine, always,” Aklesia Maereg said.
As the anonymous organizer noted: “The work never stops.”
Omar Zahzah’s new book, Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle, is published by The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press.
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