Police Raid Pro-Palestine Students’ Home in FBI-Led Graffiti Investigation
In the early morning hours of November 7, more than 12 police officers showed up outside at an address in Springfield, Virginia, knocked, broke down the door, and raided the family home of two Palestinian American students at George Mason University.
University and Fairfax County police refused to show the family the warrant. One Fairfax County detective with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force — cross-designated as a local and federal agent — was also present. The family and Mason faculty supporting them, however, believe they know what the FBI-led investigation was about: the young family members’ pro-Palestine activism.
Two of the Palestinian American family’s daughters attend George Mason. One is an undergraduate student and the co-president of Mason’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The other is in a master’s program at Mason and a former president of the school’s SJP chapter.
“These students haven’t been accused of a criminal, civil, or student conduct violation, yet they have been banned from campus.”
The authorities told the family the raid was related to a spray-paint vandalism incident at George Mason’s campus in August — part of the widespread campus protests related to Israel’s war on Gaza. In September, the university police department put out flyers offering a $2,000 reward for information about the incident.
In short order, the school’s SJP chapter was suspended. Soon after, George Mason Police Chief Carl Rowan Jr. served the sisters with criminal trespass notices barring them from campus for four years — meaning that they can no longer continue their education.
“I’m worried for our students and I’m concerned for our schools,” said Mason professor Ben Manski, the SJP chapter’s faculty adviser. “There are still no allegations and no charges that I’m aware of. Without those, we can’t have due process, we don’t know what is behind these actions, and we can’t know whether the public interest is being served or harmed.”
Alexander Monea, an associate professor of English at George Mason, questioned the school’s disciplinary process.
“These students haven’t been accused of a criminal, civil, or student conduct violation,” Monea said, “yet they have been banned from campus for four years, effectively expelling them from the university.”
In a letter Tuesday night on the George Mason raid, more than 80 groups, including chapters of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at Mason and 11 other schools, called on Mason to revoke the trespass orders, reinstate the SJP chapter, return laptops and phones to the two students, and conduct a full independent investigation into the decisions made by Mason police, school administrators, and the Board of Visitors — the university’s governing body — that led to the raid.
“Do universities such as GMU routinely send phalanxes of police officers in military fatigues and armored vehicles, and carrying assault rifles, to break down the front door and raid the homes of students during the pre-dawn hours over an allegation of spray painting? Do administrators routinely rush to judgment and issue criminal trespass orders—the kind used to exclude serial sexual predators and stalkers from campus—against students who have been accused of graffiti?” the groups wrote. “It appears that the answers to these questions may increasingly be ‘yes.’”
“An Extension of State Power”
The severe moves against the family and the school’s SJP chapter are part of the latest wave of the crackdown against campus Palestine solidarity protests. As Israel’s war and demonstrations against it have dragged into a second year, the repression of Gaza protests continues to derail students’ education and ensnare them in disciplinary and court proceedings over activism on campus.
Police in Philadelphia conducted a similar raid in October, The Intercept reported, when authorities descended on the home of student leaders in the University of Pennsylvania’s Palestine solidarity movement.
An attorney for the family questioned the basis for the raid and called on George Mason to resist overreach by law enforcement. “It’s clear that the university and police—local and federal—are working in tandem to intimidate, penalize, and criminalize student activism around Palestine,” said attorney Abdel-Rahman Hamed.
“Students, faculty, and people of conscience must stand firmly against this authoritarian overreach and demand accountability from university administrators, the police, and the Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney.”
George Mason spokesperson Paola Duran declined to answer questions about the raid. “The university has no comment on matters of ongoing criminal investigations,” Duran said in a statement to The Intercept.
Fairfax County Police Department’s public affairs office told The Intercept the department only assisted with the case and that George Mason University and the FBI were the lead investigators and directed questions to them. FBI Washington field office spokesperson Lira Gallagher said the agency could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation and directed questions to George Mason police. The Fairfax County Attorney and George Mason police did not respond to requests for comment.
Police used excessive violence in the raid in response to paint on the floor, said Bassam Haddad, a member of the George Mason faculty.
“Universities and university administrators have become an extension of state power, and we have now seen it firsthand in this case of a violent raid into the students’ home without any material evidence whatsoever,” said Haddad, a founding director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies program at George Mason and an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government.
It was not lost on George Mason students that the crackdown seemed to target the large number of Arab and Muslim students at the school.
“When they do things like this, it really does impact an entire community and an entire demographic at our school.”
“This repression has really been built up against multiple organizations on campus, especially with SJP, but really with any pro-Palestinian leaning organizations,” said a student representative of the George Mason University Coalition for Palestine, a campus organization, who asked for anonymity to avoid retaliation. “GMU has a huge Arab and Muslim population. When they do things like this, it really does impact an entire community and an entire demographic at our school.”
“This honestly has just been an attack, not only on Palestinian organizers and the movement in general, but also on free speech as well.”
SJP Suspension
When police arrived at the household last month, they forced the family to gather in the living room while they searched the house, according to two people familiar with the matter. Some family members were eventually released to attend work, but the rest remained while police conducted their six-hour search.
Police seized electronics from the residence, including phones and laptops, but made no arrests. At one point, police found antique firearms legally registered to the family’s son, a Mason alum and volunteer deputy chief firefighter.
Following the raid, authorities brought charges against the son related to the firearms. He litigated the charges, and a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge dismissed them two weeks later.
“As a faculty senator, my colleagues asked me to raise a question to President Gregory Washington about the students’ family home being raided during a faculty senate meeting,” said Monea, the English professor. “He declined to share any information with the faculty senate at that time.”
Mason administrators sent an email to the SJP co-president the day after the raid announcing that the SJP chapter had been placed under an interim suspension. Since the daughter who currently leads SJP had her computer seized, however, she did not see the email until the following week.
No other SJP members nor Manski, the group’s faculty adviser, were made aware of the suspension until later last month. They finally found out when SJP members were told that a scheduled panel with the school chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had been canceled due to the suspension.
The raid is part of the school’s increasing hostility toward activism against the war in Gaza, said Haddad, the faculty member supporting students. George Mason’s Board of Visitors — the school’s governing body — includes two appointments by Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin who currently work at the Heritage Foundation, which has called on the FBI to investigate campus protests against the war on Gaza.
“Have we become like the Soviet Union that we have been supposedly criticizing for decades, and now we continue to use as an example of overstretched power, corrupt power, and repressive and tyrannical power?” Haddad said. “Is this what we have become?”
Update: December 4, 2024
This story has been updated to include a letter from more than 80 groups criticizing the police raid of the George Mason students’ home and calling for many of the official actions against them to be reversed.
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