ANN ARBOR, MI — Federal prosecutors have indicted eight revolutionary pro-Palestine activists in Michigan, including a member of the Revolutionary Student Union, or RSU, in an escalation of the FBI’s campaign against the anti-imperialist movement. This follows more than two and a half years of repression against Palestine solidarity organizing at the University of Michigan, or UM, beginning openly with the arrest of 40 protesters at the Alexander G. Ruthven Building on November 17, 2023, and continuing through encampment repression, private surveillance, FBI raids, and now federal charges. Three comrades from Chicago, Milwaukee, and Detroit have been released, while four remain in federal custody pending bond hearings, as supporters prepare court support and solidarity actions around the country. The case is part of a broader onslaught of repression aimed at intimidating the entire anti-imperialist and working-class movement, draining it through legal costs, and criminalizing opposition to U.S. backing for “Israel.”
The defendants are victims of state terror. The Trump administration, FBI, and Justice Department are using federal law to turn agitation around Palestine solidarity into a sweeping criminal case. The purpose of the charges is plain: isolate militants, exhaust organizers, intimidate supporters, and threaten opposition to U.S. support for “Israel” with raids, detention, surveillance, and federal prosecution.
Since the arrests during divestment protests at the Ruthven Building, UM officials, local police, the FBI, the Biden administration, and now the Trump administration have each assisted in the repression of pro-Palestine organizing. In 2024, UM campus police raided the Gaza Solidarity Encampment before dawn, arresting four people and intensifying the university’s campaign against pro-Palestine organizing. In 2025, felony charges connected to the encampment were dropped, but this did not signal an end to the repression. The university was later exposed for using private investigators to surveil pro-Palestine students on and off campus.
The April 2025 FBI raids marked another step in this offensive. Federal and local police raided homes connected to UM Palestine solidarity organizers across southeast Michigan, including Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Canton. The raids, aimed at pro-Palestine activists, seized electronics and personal property, and served as an intimidation tactic in the wake of the campus encampments. Now the Trump administration has escalated from raids and surveillance to federal detention. Through this case, the state is converting anti-genocide organizing into a counterinsurgency prosecution.
The state’s narrative is built to make Palestine solidarity appear criminal by association. This is the same political maneuver used across the country as universities, police, prosecutors, Zionist organizations, and federal agencies attempt to equate opposition to genocide with support for terrorism.
The bourgeois press has largely repeated the government’s framing through the language of accusation, all while treating the federal state as a neutral authority. The FBI and Justice Department, however, are not neutral. They are organs of a state that arms, funds, and politically shields “Israel” while repressing those who resist genocide. The indictment is a political weapon. Its purpose is to discipline the movement, protect U.S. Imperialism, and defend the Zionist outpost in West Asia.
This case is an attack on the entire anti-Imperialist and working-class movement. The targets today are revolutionary pro-Palestine activists and RSU members. The state began with revolutionary elements because it wants to isolate the most militant fighters, just as it did with the Prairieland Defendants, but it will not stop there. Labor organizers, anti-war militants, tenants, migrants, national liberation organizers, and anyone who confronts the machinery of U.S. Imperialism is a target of repression. The state is testing how far it can go: raids before trial, federal detention before conviction, surveillance before charges.
The timing is deliberate. The state is striking after the peak of mass campus mobilizations, when it believes the movement can be isolated, divided, and worn down. That calculation must be defeated. Militant political defense must be organized through court support, coordinated solidarity actions, public education, legal defense fundraising, and clear opposition to the federal criminalization of Palestine solidarity and revolutionary activism.
Bond hearings Friday mark a decisive moment for the comrades and for the movement defending them. Court support and solidarity actions around the country must show that the FBI cannot quietly disappear revolutionary pro-Palestine activists into federal custody or cut them off from the people. Every attempt to terrorize Palestine solidarity must be frustrated through broader organization, defense, support, and disciplined coordination.
This repression is part of the wider militarization and fascistization of the U.S. state. The same regime that funds genocide abroad expands terror at home. The same state that arms “Israel” raids the homes of those who oppose the war machine. The same ruling class that demands obedience from workers, migrants, and oppressed nations uses federal courts to punish revolutionary politics. As the crises of U.S. Imperialism deepen, it increasingly relies on surveillance, detention, militarization, political prosecutions, and counter-“terrorism” to manage dissent.
This terror has not isolated the defendants from the movement. Their case belongs to every organization, worker, student, and oppressed person with an interest in resisting U.S. Imperialism. The task now is to defend the comrades, expose the state’s attack, raise legal defense funds, and build the organized capacity to withstand repression. The state wants fear, silence, and fragmentation. The movement must answer with discipline, militance, and struggle.
Drop The Charges!
Free The Michigan 8!
No Raids, No Cages, No Federal Charges!
Repression Breeds Resistance!
No Federal Charges For Opposing Genocide!
