Power & Pushback: Dallas Palestine activist detained over social media posts

A photojournalist and Palestine activist in Dallas is being detained by ICE over his social media posts.

Yaakub Vijandre is a DACA recipient who has lived in the United States legally since 2001. Earlier this month, six ICE vehicles showed up at his apartment, where agents arrested him at gunpoint before bringing him to the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas.

Vijandre’s DACA status was supposed to remain active until May 2026, but the Trump administration revoked it. The administration admits that he was targeted because of his social media presence.

“When you break our laws and advocate for violence and terrorism, you should not be in this country,” tweeted DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

DHS says that Vijandre ended up on the radar “Dallas Joint Terrorism Task Force” after he allegedly posted a quote from the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in 2006. They say Vijandre also made posts in support of the Holy Land Five and Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, who is currently serving an 86-year sentence for attempted murder and other felonies.

Additionally, DHS alleges that Vijandre attempted to raise money for the Fort Dix Five, who were convicted of plotting an attack on the New Jersey Army base.

Eric Lee, one of Vijandre’s attorneys, told the Dallas Morning News that the government didn’t cite any of these specific posts in their allegations and that he has yet to see a post connected to the Fort Dix.

“In any event, the Fort Dix 5 are not a foreign terrorist organization and there is nothing illegal about giving or raising money so that people’s constitutional rights in U.S. Court proceedings are being protected,” said Lee.

Vijandre legal team notes that the FBI asked him to become an informant and snitch on Palestine movement members in 2023, but he refused.

“As the administration elaborates a sweeping definition of ‘domestic terrorism,’ the American people must be wide awake to the precedent that ICE is attempting to establish in Yaakub’s case,” reads a statement put out by his lawyers. “As a longtime US resident, the First Amendment applies fully to Yaakub.”

“There is no legitimate legal distinction between the type of speech Yaakub engages in and the type of ‘anti-American’ and ‘anti-fascist’ speech that White House policy memos (NSPM-7) now characterize as ‘domestic terrorism,’ and which millions of people expressed by participating in demonstrations across the country in the No Kings demonstrations last weekend,” it continues. “We urge the population to stand up and stop the White House from establishing the precedent that a longtime US resident may be detained for social media posts like those referenced by DHS in this case. It is time to draw a line in the sand.”

The Dallas Morning News article on Vijandre notes his involvement in the local community. “He founded a Boy Scout troop, organized food drives for those affected by the 2021 winter storm, and pushed for a robotics and AI space at MAS Dallas to teach youth about new technology,” the paper explains.

At the time of his arrest, Vijandre was working on a documentary about Marwan Marouf, a Muslim community leader who was detained by ICE in September despite legally living in the United States for 30 years.

MIT lawsuit

A First Circuit court has dismissed a discrimination lawsuit alleging that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) made Jewish students feel unsafe by failing to quell pro-Palestine protests on campus.

The decision affirms a lower court’s ruling that also dismissed the effort.

The pro-Israel StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice had sued the school, alongside two Jewish students.

The plaintiffs claimed that Jewish students were blocked from portions of the campus, intimidated, and doxxed. They also alleged that speakers allowed on campus fomented hostility toward Jews.

The three-judge panel ruled that the allegations didn’t “plausibly rise to the level of actionable harassment.”

“Requiring MIT to restrict students’ expression merely because those students opposed Israel and favored the Palestinian cause would infringe upon MIT’s freedom to encourage, rather than suppress, a vigorous exchange of ideas,” read the ruling.

Notably, the court also ruled that anti-Zionist slogans like “From the river to the sea” are not antisemitic.

“The sordid history of antisemitism provides a litany of epithets and tropes widely understood as expressions of religious or racial animus,” the judges wrote. “As described by plaintiffs, the scores of protesters holding handmade signs and voicing various chants eschewed those epithets and tropes, directing their ire instead at the Israeli state and its treatment of Palestinians.”

The court explicitly rejected the controversial IHRA working definition of antisemitism here, saying they didn’t find view “dispositive.”

Palestine Legal celebrated the ruling as a victory for campus protesters and the First Amendment more broadly.

“Courts can’t punish universities for failing to censor or punish campus speech supporting Palestinian liberation, even if other students complain,” concluded the group. “Private universities should be emboldened to protect, not punish, their students’ speech.”

Further Reading

• Politico: Appeals court judges — including a Trump appointee — voice doubt over Trump’s bid to deport Mahmoud Khalil
• Just Security: How Designating Antifa as a Foreign Terrorist Organization Could Threaten Civil Liberties
• Al Jazeera: The rise of global boycotts against Israel’s genocide in Gaza
• The Guardian: The Gaza effect: how a global pro-Palestine protest movement met repression and resistance
• Monthly Review: Trump’s war against ‘Left-leaning’ groups extends further
• Responsible Statecraft: Israel wants to pay US pastors a stipend to spread the word
• Michigan Daily: Three pro-Palestine activists arrested for protesting speech given by former Israeli soldiers