On the morning of April 23, around 7 a.m., the FBI, along with other local and state police, battered down the doors of four residences across Ann Arbor, Canton, and Ypsilanti, Michigan. The homes belonged to pro-Palestine student organizers at University of Michigan.

The raids were the latest move by the University of Michigan and the state against student organizers following the protest encampments last spring. The school has seen particularly harsh repression of campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza.

While no arrests were made, all electronics were seized into FBI custody and at least two DNA samples were collected, according to local attorneys representing the subjects of the raids. The warrants were from Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office and signed by a judge in the 45th District Court in the small town of Oak Point, Michigan, but attorneys also say they have yet to see probable cause for the search and seizures. Nessel, a Democrat, still has not unsealed and shared the affidavits for the warrants with lawyers or the residents they raided.

“These raids were very much seen as an escalation by the state attorney general, who’s expressed quite a bit of an extreme reaction against the students’ activism on the University of Michigan campus,” said John Philo, executive and legal director of the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice, the group representing the targets of the raids. “In terms of probable cause for the warrants, it’s entirely unknown at the moment. The search warrants were issued based on a complaint and the judge has ordered for the affidavit to be suppressed. It’s a terribly unusual thing.”

Nessel, who asked the FBI to carry out the raids, has positioned herself publicly as one of President Donald Trump’s biggest opponents. She also has

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