Mousa Najjar was on his way to pick up a friend from DFW Airport on June 27 when a Texas Department of Public Safety State Trooper pulled him over for a routine traffic stop. The officer arrested Najjar on warrants for criminal trespassing and disruption of a meeting or procession. This came as a surprise to Narraj, who was unaware warrants had been issued for his arrest. It was the second time he had been arrested for criminal trespassing in two months. The location of Najjar’s alleged crimes was the same as the entity pursuing the charges against him: the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), from which he’d just graduated with a degree in computer science.
“It’s not something that we necessarily expected,” Najjar says. “But we’re not shocked either that UTD has done this.”
Najjar’s first arrest occurred May 1, when he participated in a protest encampment at UTD that called for the university to divest from companies that profit from the war in Gaza. At the time, Najjar was the president of the UTD chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a national college student activism organization that advocates for boycott and divestment against corporations that deal with Israel.
On May 15, Najjar attended the graduation ceremony for the engineering and computer science school at UTD, something he believed he was entitled to do under the rules of his suspension, which went into effect after the arrest. During the ceremony, Najjar unfurled a Palestinian flag and waved it at the audience. He was escorted off stage by university officials and then off campus by police officers. It was then that the university chose to file charges against Narraj, adding to the existing criminal charge he was already facing.
Najjar was not the only student to wave a Palestinian flag during a UTD graduation ceremony. There are TikTok videos to prove it. He believes he has been targeted by his alma mater for his political views, his role as an organizer, and his Palestinian identity.
“Many students have done that, and no one has been charged,” Najjar says. “That was obviously a very specific case of targeting and intimidation.”
Across the state of Texas, students who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses have faced arrest and disciplinary action from their university administrations. In most instances, such as at UT Austin and the University of Houston, local district attorneys have dropped criminal charges against student protestors, allowing them to move through university disciplinary processes without fear that their testimony or actions could be used against them in a criminal court. But that’s not the case for students arrested at UTD.
On May 1, 21 students, faculty, and community activists were arrested for refusing to leave the protest encampment at UTD in a dramatic show of force from five law enforcement agencies. Of the 21 arrestees, nine were university students whom UTD has since banned from campus except for class and class-related activities. The university maintains the protesters were not arrested for protesting, but rather for criminal trespass after they refused to leave a protest encampment, which is not permitted under the university’s policies regarding free speech and assembly.
In addition to criminal charges, the students face allegations of committing four violations of the UTD code of conduct: failure to comply with a request of an official of the university; disruptive conduct that interferes with the orderly functioning of the university; obstruction or interference with programs and activities; and a general violation of rules and regulations. Potential punishments for these alleged violations include “deferred suspension” or “denial of degree.” The former means the students could be automatically suspended in the future for any infraction; the latter means the university won’t acknowledge the students as graduates for a specified period of time, potentially hampering job searches after graduation.
Student protesters who have yet to graduate won’t be allowed at UTD except to attend classes. That’s the case for Mariam Lafi, a sophomore studying neuroscience. At an August 6 press conference, Lafi was among nine UTD students and recent graduates who announced they are disputing the charges and sanctions from the university and will not admit to any wrongdoing. She remained focused on the ultimate aim of their protest.
“We demand that UTD adopt a transparent investment policy … and socially responsible investment criteria that guide our university in making ethical and morally responsible investments,” Lafi said. “Now more than ever, we are committed to an end to the genocide of Palestinians and the liberation of Palestine.”
In May, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, said there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel is “commiting the crime of genocide against the Palestinians as a group in Gaza.” The governments of Israel and the United States dispute the characterization.
Months after students and faculty members at UTD were arrested, they still have no clarity on whether criminal charges will be pursued. “The university has attempted to wash its hands of the prosecutions,” says Dan Sullivan, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild who is supporting the students in their criminal and disciplinary cases. “They have said they will not interfere in the cases. But that’s not the reality. The reality is that these are simple criminal trespass charges. And as in any other criminal trespass case, realistically, if the so-called complaining witness—the university—were to decide it did not want them prosecuted, the cases would go away.”
One key difference that sets UTD students apart from students at other universities in Texas is that the criminal charges against them were filed in a county that is dominated by Republican prosecutors, including Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis. Given Governor Greg Abbott’s direct hand in deploying State Troopers to protests, his cheering of student protester arrests, and his policing of protesters’ intentions, it seems unlikely that a Republican district attorney would drop the charges.
The UTD campus straddles the boundary between Dallas County and Collin County. The May 1 protest occurred within Dallas County limits but was close enough to the Collin County line that either county’s law enforcement could legally respond. There is speculation among students that law enforcement from Collin County was called to the scene because the county tends to be more conservative than Dallas, but it has been impossible to verify or disprove the supposition in large part due to a lack of transparency from UTD administration and local law enforcement agencies. UTD did not respond to a request for comment.
The administration at UTD has refused to comment on questions regarding the exact series of events leading up to the arrests on May 1. Public information requests sent to the university by student journalists with the UTD Mercury have faced lengthy delays and exorbitant fees. Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, the editor in chief, says that after receiving an initial bill of $8,500, they were able to negotiate the price down to around $3,500. Gutierrez says they successfully raised the funds to pay the bill, but they do not expect to be able to access the records until late 2024 or early 2025. A public information request D Magazine sent to the Collin County Sheriff’s Office was challenged by the agency, citing ongoing investigations, and sent up to Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office for a ruling. The Collin County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
But not all the criminal charges were filed in Collin County. The arrest warrants for Najjar’s two additional charges stemming from his graduation protest were issued in Dallas. He says that he “anticipates that it will be handled a lot differently.”
The Dallas District Attorney’s office declined to comment. “As a general rule we do not comment on matters that may or may not be under investigation,” wrote Claire Crouch, media relations manager for the Dallas District Attorney’s office. “So we will decline to comment.”
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