On June 10, 2026, the FBI raided the homes of activists involved in Palestine solidarity activism at the University of Michigan (UM), who are now known as the “Michigan 8.” In a show of force, federal agents in military gear broke through the door of a home in Ypsilanti, MI, to arrest a couple of individuals. That day, the FBI also arrested individuals connected to UM Palestine activism in Illinois and Wisconsin. The Justice Department indicted these activists on wildly exaggerated “conspiracy” charges. They could face decades in prison.
The government is now targeting a pro-Palestinian campus labor union involved in defending the Michigan 8.
Last month, August 2026, the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO), which represents over 4,000 UM graduate student workers, was served a subpoena signed by the Justice Department’s attorney on the Michigan 8 case. This came shortly after UM and a local prosecutor tried – but failed – to bring down GEO’s President using baseless “embezzlement” charges. The August subpoena requests extensive information about GEO, including a list of current and former members, meeting minutes, and financial records, dating back to 2023.
This is a clear criminalization of ordinary labor organizing. It’s also a “fishing expedition” that is meant to help the government’s case against Palestine solidarity activists.
The developments in Michigan closely follow those in Minnesota, where certain anti-ICE organizers (the “Minnesota 15”) were also indicted on “conspiracy” charges in June 2026, and where federal agents had spied on unions and used a subpoena to obtain union financial records.
The federal government understands that our struggles are connected. It’s time all labor unions realize it too, and refuse to separate Palestine solidarity or migrant justice organizing from labor organizing.
Criminalizing a pro-Palestinian labor union by targeting its president
The University of Michigan has been working with the local and federal governments to attack GEO. In recent years, GEO, which is Local 3550 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), has won concessions. In April 2023, it went on the longest strike in the University’s history, which resulted in better pay and health care for graduate workers. And while big labor unions have historically been on the side of U.S. imperialism (AFT’s current President Randi Weingarten is a staunch Zionist), some union locals, such as GEO, have embraced Palestine solidarity.
Recognizing this emerging alliance between labor and Palestine solidarity organizing, the University turned to the legal system to criminalize the union. This past summer, they went after GEO’s President, Hiab Teshome, an MD-PhD student at UM.
On June 15, 2026, just five days after the FBI raids on the Michigan 8, Detective Sergeant Ryan Cavanaugh of the University of Michigan Police Department called Teshome on her personal phone to say there was a warrant for her arrest and that she would soon be charged with “embezzlement” and “false pretenses.” According to Teshome, he said he wanted to talk about the logistics of her turning herself in to the police. Cavanaugh is well-known to the campus Palestine solidarity movement: he has pepper-sprayed some protesters in the past, allegedly tackled others, and also attended the September 9, 2026, court hearing for the Michigan 8, where we saw him speaking with the U.S. government attorneys. Organizers, including Teshome, also report that Cavanaugh has a history of harassing them. In February and April of 2026, Cavanaugh had called Teshome to tell her she was being investigated for “embezzlement,” but without giving specifics. Teshome says she referred Cavanaugh to her lawyer, but he failed to respond to her lawyer’s calls. Instead, he continued to call, text, and email Teshome directly, and even visited her former residence, believing it was her current home.
It turned out that the “embezzlement” charges concerned purchases made by a student group in which Teshome was the designated co-signer. UM claimed the purchases weren’t properly accounted for – yet Teshome did not make these purchases herself and was no longer involved in the group. She was implicated simply by being a co-signer, on paper.
Rather than try to resolve this bureaucratic matter internally with its own students, UM took the unprecedented step of turning to the local county prosecutor, Eli Savit (who calls himself a “progressive prosecutor” and is currently running for Michigan Attorney General). Using the narrative and information provided by Cavanaugh, Savit then pressed felony charges against Teshome for embezzlement and false pretenses.
At Teshome’s arraignment on June 26, 2026, an Ann Arbor judge noted that the University had requested that Teshome be banned from campus as part of the bond conditions. Such a ban would have prevented Teshome from participating in the union’s bargaining with the University. The judge refused that request, but instead banned Teshome from the University’s administration building and specifically noted she must stay away from the UM Regents. The Regents, who set the University’s major policies, have been targeted by campus activists with calls to divest from Israel. This bond condition shows that the attack on Teshome was also meant to stifle such divestment campaigns.
In response, many showed solidarity with Teshome. An open letter in support of Teshome was signed by hundreds of individuals and several organizations, including the Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU-UAW Local 5118) and the Huron Valley DSA. Yet conspicuously absent from the signatories was Michigan’s labor union establishment, which did not seem to grasp the political significance of the attack on a union president. This is the same labor establishment that had failed to heed a call by Palestinian trade unions, following October 7, 2023, to disrupt the entities enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Nonetheless, the grassroots prevailed. On August 6 2026, activists and community members packed the court for Teshome’s probable cause conference. The judge, Cedric Simpson, dismissed the charges within minutes. The court, Simpson said, “is certainly not getting involved in that.”
Criminalizing the whole union
After the effort to bring down Teshome failed, the next target became the union as a whole.
The federal government served a grand jury subpoena, dated August 6: the day that the charges against Teshome were dismissed by the court. The subpoena – signed by the Justice Department Attorney Maggie Smith from the Michigan 8 case and by Detroit office FBI agent Kara Phipps – asks for the following information, dating back to January 1, 2023:
“1. Collective bargaining agreements;
2. Constitution and By-laws;
3. All disbursement records and receipts journals pertaining to union officials;
4. All union employee personnel records, to include all payroll records, W-2 Forms, W-4 Forms, 1099’s, etc;
5. All associated membership agreements;
6. Listing of all active and former union members;
7. Complete listing of all officers and executive board members, to include position.
8. All minutes of membership meetings and Executive Board meetings” [emphasis added].
“The University of Michigan and the federal government are attacking our union and the broader labor and Palestine solidarity movement because we are powerful and because we are challenging the University’s material investments in genocide,” said GEO President Hiab Teshome. GEO’s lawyers are currently attempting to get the subpoena quashed on the grounds that it is too broad in scope and violates the union members’ rights to free speech.
The attacks on this Michigan labor union closely parallel the federal government’s tactics against the anti-ICE movement in Minnesota, following the January 2026 murders of Alex Pretti and Renée Good by ICE agents. As part of their investigation into “domestic terrorist financing,” federal agents used subpoenas to obtain several years’ worth of wire transfers made by the Service Employees International Union, which largely represents health care workers. The individuals who so far have been singled out by the government, the Minnesota 15, may now face decades in prison, just like the Michigan 8.
“What is happening to our labor union and other unions across the country is extreme acts of workplace repression by our employer collaborating with the state and the federal government to weaken labor organizing and violate our right to collective action,” Teshome noted.
The major labor unions can no longer keep pretending like workers’ struggles can be separated from Palestine solidarity or from the struggle against ICE and policing. No one should stay neutral on this moving train.
Ways to support the Michigan 8 and Minnesota 15
- Donate to the Michigan 8 legal fund and visit defendmichigan8.org
- Donate to the Minnesota 15 legal fund and visit minnesota15.org
