Latest news with #Makled
The Guardian
05-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Michigan AG drops all charges against seven pro-Palestinian protesters
Michigan's attorney general, Dana Nessel, announced on Monday that she was dropping all charges against seven pro-Palestinian demonstrators arrested last May at a University of Michigan encampment. The announcement came just moments before the judge was to decide on a defense motion to disqualify Nessel's office over alleged bias. Defense attorney Amir Makled said the motion largely stemmed from an October Guardian report detailing Nessel's extensive personal, financial and political connections to university regents calling for the activists to be prosecuted. 'This was a case of selective prosecution and rooted in bias, not in public safety issues,' Makled added. 'We're hoping this sends a message to other institutions locally and nationally that protest is not a crime, and dissent is not disorder.' Nessel's office is still moving forward with cases involving the alleged off-campus vandalization of the home and workplace of several university leaders. A handful of other cases against campus protesters still have not been dropped, but Makled said he was hopeful they would be. The protesters and their supporters, among them the US representative Rashida Tlaib, had previously alleged bias in Nessel's office, arguing that the university recruited her because she was a political ally. The Guardian's investigation revealed concrete evidence of conflicts that defense attorneys argued factored into the prosecutions. Among the findings, the story revealed Nessel's office charged pro-Palestinian protesters at a higher rate than other state prosecutors. Nessel was recruited by university regents, who were frustrated by local prosecutors' unwillingness to crack down on most of the students arrested, to take over the case and file charges, three people with direct knowledge of the decision told the Guardian at the time. The investigation also found that six of eight regents contributed more than $33,000 combined to Nessel's campaigns. Additionally, her office hired a regent's law firm to handle major state cases, and the same regent co-chaired her 2018 campaign. Meanwhile, Nessel received significant campaign donations from pro-Israel state politicians, organizations and university donors who over the last year have vocally criticized Gaza protests, records show. In September, just days before Nessel announced the charges, a regent posted on Instagram a picture of himself with Nessel and the pro-Israel state representative Jeremy Moss, another outspoken critic of Gaza protests, at an event for the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus with the caption 'grateful for these two'. The university, some regents, and Nessel at the time strongly denied that she was recruited, or that the connections influenced the investigation. Makled said the judge had told him he was leaning toward granting an evidentiary hearing on the bias allegation, which would have opened Nessel's office to discovery, or the requirement to turn over evidence. 'I think she didn't want to open the can of worms that was coming her way,' Makled added. The Guardian has reached out to Nessel for comment. In a media statement sent out this morning, her office lambasted the court for moving slowly on the case, and called the bias allegations 'baseless and absurd'. 'The motion for recusal has been a diversionary tactic which has only served to further delay the proceedings,' it added. It also cited the impropriety of the Jewish Federation, a pro-Israel advocacy group, directly sending a letter to the judge defending Nessel, which the statement said contributed to a 'circus-like atmosphere to these proceedings'. The Guardian identified about 2,800 citations, charges or summonses that were brought or requested against protesters in a dozen cities across the country as of late 2024. Most of those were dropped or dismissed. Makled called Nessel's decision 'a victory for the constitution'.
Al Jazeera
30-04-2025
- Al Jazeera
A ‘constitutional loophole': How phone inspections test US civil rights
Dearborn, Michigan – Travelling is a normal part of life for Michigan lawyer Amir Makled. As recently as December, he went overseas and returned home to the United States without any issues. 'I've been out of the country at least 20 times. I've been all over Europe. I go to Lebanon every year,' he said. But returning this month to the Detroit Metro Airport was a very different experience. He and his family had just come home from a spring-break holiday in the Dominican Republic when they reached a customs checkpoint. 'The agent looked over at me and then looked to another agent and asked him if the TTRT agents are here. I didn't know what this meant.' He googled the acronym. It stands for Tactical Terrorist Response Teams. 'As an Arab American and as a Muslim American, whenever I'm travelling, even if I'm driving in from Canada, I feel some sort of anxiety about it, that I'm going to be randomly selected to be stopped or profiled,' he explained. 'When he said those words, I thought: 'OK, I'm going to be profiled here.'' Sure enough, Makled and his family were asked to go to another room. Since Makled is a US citizen, born in Detroit, Michigan, he knew that he couldn't be denied entry into the country. He urged his wife and kids to pass through the checkpoint without him. 'I knew my rights at the border in that regard. And I was also familiar with the extent of border searches,' he said. 'This is the first time I've ever been stopped.' But what happened next would put the lawyer in a precarious position. Border control agents have considerable legal rights to search a person's belongings. The idea is to prevent security hazards, contraband or environmental threats from entering the country. Those searches, however, extend to the contents of electronic devices. And that raises questions about what material needs to be regulated — and what needs to be protected from the prying eyes of the government. Makled knew the border agents could take his phone. But as a lawyer, he faced a thorny ethical dilemma. His phone contained privileged attorney-client information. In the US, a basic tenet of the legal system is that a client can have frank discussions with their lawyer, with the safety of knowing anything they say will be kept confidential. A substantial amount of Makled's work was on his phone. When asked to hand it over, he told the border officers he couldn't give them the device. 'All my emails, my text messages, my files, the cloud-based software I use for my office,' he said, 'it's all through my phone.' As a civil rights and criminal defence lawyer, Makled represents people he said are particularly vulnerable. One of his clients is a protester who was arrested at a pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Michigan last year. She was later charged with resisting and obstructing police, a felony that carries up to a two-year prison sentence. Makled believes he was targeted because the border officers knew this information. One of the agents, he said, even called him a 'famous lawyer', a comment he took to be a reference to the protester's case. In the end, he gave the agents written permission to see his contacts but no other permissions. After about 90 minutes at the airport, he was allowed to leave with his phone. For nearly a century, Title 19 of the US code has allowed border control officers the right to search any person entering the country, their luggage or other items in their possession at the time of the inspection. But digital devices today contain far more information than is relevant to a person's trip. The most recent fiscal year saw 47,047 electronic devices searched by border control officers, the vast majority of which belonged to non-US citizens. That's a nearly 13 percent increase over the previous fiscal year in 2023, when US Customs and Border Protection clocked 41,767 electronic searches. The question of whether these searches can be manipulated for political gain or reprisals has long dogged the process. In November 2018, for instance, an employee of the tech company Apple, Andreas Gal, said he was detained while returning to San Francisco from an international trip. Like Makled, Gal was flagged for the TTRT. And like the lawyer, customs officers pushed to search his electronic devices. He refused. Gal later said he believed he was targeted in response to the political views he expressed online. But in recent weeks, experts fear the threat of such searches has risen. Since taking office for a second term in January, President Donald Trump has sought to deport noncitizens he sees as critical of the US or its ally Israel. Material from electronic devices has been among the evidence allegedly used to expel people from the country. For example, kidney transplant specialist Rasha Alawieh had been denied re-entry after flying back to the US from her native Lebanon. She held a valid H-1B visa that allowed her to work in the US. News reports indicate that the Trump administration cited photos recovered from her phone as motivation for expelling her, including images she had of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. 'Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied,' the Department of Homeland Security wrote in a statement after Alawieh's expulsion. Also in March, the French government said one of its citizens, a scientist, was prevented from entering the US on account of the political messages on his phone. The Trump administration has denied that accusation, however. 'The French researcher in question was in possession of confidential information on his electronic device from Los Alamos National Laboratory — in violation of a non-disclosure agreement,' Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin wrote on social media. 'Any claim that his removal was based on political beliefs is blatantly false.' There are two types of screenings a device may undergo while in border control custody. A 'light' search happens when an officer looks through an electronic device by hand. An advanced search, which legally requires 'reasonable suspicion' of a crime, involves the device being connected to external equipment. The device may not be returned to its owner for weeks or months. Border agents do not need a warrant to search an electronic device, although US citizens are not obligated to unlock their electronics in order to re-enter their country. However, for travellers who are not US citizens or permanent residents, refusing to share these details could result in being denied entry. But experts say these practices raise serious concerns about the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which grants protection from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. Esha Bhandari, the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, explained she has seen examples of the government using these border checks to bypass Fourth Amendment protections. 'The government is increasingly treating this as a constitutional loophole,' Bhandari said. 'They have someone under investigation, and rather than waiting on whether they can establish probable cause, which requires a judge to give a warrant, they wait until someone crosses the international border and treat that as a convenient opportunity to search their devices.' But just how far that loophole can stretch is a matter of debate. Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the courts in the US have yet to reach a consensus about just how far searches of digital devices can go — and what the limits are. 'At this moment, whether you fly into San Francisco vs Boston vs Atlanta, there are three different rulings on exactly which part of your phone can be searched, for what purposes [or] what level of suspicion is needed,' Hussain said. 'A number of lower courts have ruled on the issue, [but] there has not been uniformity.' For his part, Makled said he has not been deterred from travelling — or representing controversial causes. 'I feel that this is an intimidation tactic. It's an attempt to dissuade me from taking on these types of cases,' he said, referring to his defence of the protester arrested at the University of Michigan. 'I say I won't be dissuaded. I'm going to continue to do what I believe.'
Forbes
17-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Finding Humanity In The Workplace As AI Takes The Lead
This is a published version of Forbes' Careers Newsletter. Click here to subscribe and get it in your inbox every Tuesday. Worried about border incidents, some employers are considering issuing burner phones to their employees. (Photo by) Getty Images Burner phones are usually seen in spy movies or true crime TV shows. Now, use of these devices is being recommended for some more traditional employees. The European Commission has issued burner phones and basic laptops to some of its staff flying into the United States for this spring's IMF and World Bank meetings, the Financial Times reported Monday. In the past, the practice had typically been reserved for travel to China. The move comes after an increase in high-profile instances of U.S. border agents stopping both immigrants and U.S. citizens and searching through their phones. For example: After returning from the Dominican Republic with his family earlier this month, Detroit lawyer Amir Makled was stopped at customs, where border agents asked to search his cellphone. Makled, who often represents Arab-American clients, has advised his clients on what to do if they're stopped at the border. But his own stop, he says, is the first instance he knows of an attorney being stopped because of a case they're working on. Makled is currently representing a pro-Palestinian student protestor who was arrested at the University of Michigan. And in March, a French scientist on assignment for the French National Center for Scientific Research was denied entry at the U.S. border after immigration agents searched his phone and found messages critical of the Trump Administration. While lawyers said there isn't yet data to show that more device searches are happening at the border, a number of high-profile instances have employers picking up their phones and calling their own lawyers. 'It's popping up' among clients, says Leon Rodriguez, partner at Seyfarth's immigration practice and the former director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). 'As a general matter on immigration and travel issues, there is a much greater sense of worry among companies than there was in the first Trump Administration,' he adds. Using burner phones within the U.S. is not common practice among employers, Rodriguez adds, but it usually pops up in fields that deal with sensitive information––think those solving financial crimes, lawyers whose work information is protected by attorney-client privilege, or even employees in high-tech fields that travel with commercially sensitive data. There is no legal separation between personal or professional devices when it comes to immigration law, especially at border points where constitutional protections against 'unreasonable search and seizure' are weaker. It's just the latest issue employers must think about, and plan for, amid a changing immigration landscape in the second Trump Administration. Practical insights and advice from Forbes staff and contributors to help you succeed in your job, accelerate your career and lead smarter. Chaos and uncertainty continue to be the name of the game in the job market. Why hiring for character, instead of credentials, matters the most right now. Pick up side-gigs, take up a couple of classes and more tips on navigating financial insecurity after being laid off. Career's Q&A: Where Humanity In The Workplace Comes From With Alexi Robichaux Better Up's Alexi Robichaux thinks providing AI and human coaching to middle managers could be the way to tackle employee engagement. BetterUp You've probably heard by now that as AI becomes a larger part of our work lives, it is our human skills and interactions that will matter the most to employers. But what does that look like in practice? I sat down with Alexi Robichaux, CEO of professional coaching company BetterUp, on the heels of the company's annual summit in New York City to talk about the potential of anthropology studies, the transformation of managers, and leadership in the face of AI. The conversation below has been edited for length and clarity. What do you think is missing from the 'humanity in the face of AI' conversation right now? I wish I heard more about anthropology in the workplace and what actually makes humans perform. We have a century of science of human performance that the average manager has no access to. We know, scientifically, that when people perform, they learn all this stuff. But we're too focused on these '50 million skills in the workplace' instead of focusing on the 30 that really drive human excellence in almost any job. So really the 'soft skills'? Yeah. Just dropping in these provisional skills is not how people learn. Learning requires agency, and agency requires motivation. Employees have to want to learn. So the question then becomes: How do we spend time as employers getting people in a head space where they want to learn? Because unfortunately learning cannot be forced. It seems like this really comes into play at the manager level. Yeah. When you go and ethnographically talk to managers where they're spending most of their time, it's sometimes the home life of their people. It's not the work life, it's helping sort through that in an appropriate way. One of the things we've been tracking in management as a subset of leadership is emotional labor, and it is rising. Especially if a lot of supervisory work can be done by AI, what people are left to do as a manager is gonna be taking care of their people. And so I think we're gonna see management—and leadership as the pinnacle of management—becoming more human-centered and less task-oriented. So how do you build for that, especially as more and more organizations are cutting management levels? A lot of it is actually coaching and support for managers themselves. We know managers are the most stressed, and middle managers have it the worst. They're stuck in the middle, right? They have demands from both sides pulling on them, but they're the most pivotal, and they need the most support. So we built a product just for managers that is a combination of AI coaching that's always available and a human coach. That's on purpose because we realized that it's hard to know how to be a coach to your employees if you've never been coached. Managers are increasingly becoming coaches for their teams, where they're not solving problems, they're framing problems. News from the world of work. More small business owners are posting salaries for open roles in hopes of attracting talent, Brandon Kochkodin reports. Even in states where pay transparency is not required, Gen Z and Millennial business owners are leading the charge. Amgen's newest AI head has an unusual background––he last headed AI and data at sportswear powerhouse Nike. So how did such a transition come about? Amy Feldman reports on where Big Pharma and biotech startups are recruiting data scientists to speed up the process of drug discovery. Forbes released its annual AI 50 list last week, and one trend was clear: So long chatbots, AI agents are getting more specialized than ever. From legal workflows to autocompleting lines of code and even investment research, companies are targeting enterprise adoptions to start replacing work done by people at scale. For all the fears that AI may take your job, Writer AI is already saving businesses millions in labor costs. About 300 companies use its customizable AI apps to automate everyday work, including writing makeup product descriptions, answers to Uber's FAQs, and social media marketing campaigns. To rank-and-file knowledge workers, cofounder and CEO May Habib has a blunt message: 'Ten percent of the headcount is going to be enough.' You've probably come across at least one TikTok influencer claiming a new way to make quick and easy money. But it's more likely that they're instead making the bulk of their income from digital marketing courses on said side hustles, Danielle Chemtob reports. Could You Be Hired By This AI Recruiter Next? A recent study found that which employee benefit keeps workers from leaving their current employer, regardless of their job satisfaction? A. Health insurance B. PTO C. Gym discounts D. None of the above Check if you got it right here.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Are Any of Us Safe Now?
IN A COUPLE OF MONTHS, I'm planning a business trip to Europe. I don't scare easy, but despite the fact that I'm an American citizen and have committed no crime, I am worried about what might happen when I attempt to come home. Will Customs and Border Patrol agents pull me from the customs line as they did to Amir Makled? He's an American citizen too, a lawyer born and raised in Detroit who was returning from a vacation in the Dominican Republic. But he happens to represent a pro-Palestinian student protester. CBP detained Makled and demanded access to his phone. If you're thinking, No problem, if that happened to me, I'd demand to see a warrant, you'd be wrong. Even citizens do not have the same Fourth Amendment rights at the border that they (theoretically) enjoy inside the country. CPB can demand to examine your phone or laptop under authority to search for child pornography, drug smuggling, human smuggling, and other suspected crimes. Last month, a French scientist was denied entry into the United States because border guards searched his phone and found texts critical of Trump—and speaking ill of the Dear Leader is close to becoming a crime in the United States. If you refuse to hand over and unlock your device, they can confiscate it and prolong your detention and questioning. Makled was held for two hours before being released. The European Commission has just announced that it is issuing burner phones to officials traveling to the United States, a measure usually restricted to countries like China or Russia. Support pro-democracy, independent media by joining Bulwark+. Well, you may say, they might harass you at the airport for being a Trump critic, but that's a nuisance, not a true threat. That's probably right, not because they respect the Constitution or basic decency, but because if they're going to start arresting Trump critics they have bigger fish to fry. And yet, consider that Trump is now openly speculating on sending 'home-grown,' U.S.-citizen criminals to the Salvadoran gulag. At his Monday meeting in the Oval Office with strongman Nayib Bukele, while beaming at Bukele's refusal to return the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Trump mused about expanding El Salvador's prisons to include American citizens, saying that some of our criminals are just as bad as immigrants and that 'I'm all for it.' He floated this idea while his government is actively defying court orders to give the wrongfully deported Abrego Garcia a chance to enjoy due process. If they can do it to him, is it inconceivable that they'd do it to me? There are too many layers of outrage here to unpack, but let's just note that even agreeing to send accused (not convicted) illegal aliens to Salvadoran custody violates basic rights, and so much more so for probably innocent immigrants like Abrego Garcia and Andry José Hernández Romero, the Venezuelan makeup artist who found himself in that hellhole because of his tattoo. By one estimate, 90 percent of those deported to El Salvador had no criminal records. Bukele is famous for contemptuously disregarding human rights. Prisoners are held in inhumane conditions, stacked on metal bunks with no bedding 23 ½ hours per day, subject to torture and summary executions. We are outsourcing torture and murder. What kind of president, what kind of political party, can look at that with satisfaction? Trump and his team claim that those deported were hardened criminals. But we know that many were not, and at least in the case of Abrego Garcia, a judge had found that he had a credible fear of persecution if returned to El Salvador. Any reasonable government would apologize and tell Bukele to cough him up. But these people are indifferent to innocence. Get 30 day free trial LET'S ALSO TAKE NOTE of President Trump's expansive concept of criminality. Last week, he went beyond using the justice system to reward friends (as he did when pardoning the January 6th rioters and dropping charges against Eric Adams) and moved into the more ominous territory of targeting foes. In two memos, he instructed government lawyers to open investigations of officials from the first Trump administration, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor. Krebs, as the director of the new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during Trump's first term, committed the unpardonable sin of affirming that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Last week, in a flagrantly Orwellian memorandum, Trump declared that Krebs 'falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen.' He then directed the attorney general and other officials to scour the record to see if they can find instances of misconduct on Krebs's part. This not only violates the semi-sacred separation between the White House and the Justice Department; it is reminiscent of Joseph Stalin's hatchetman Lavrenti Beria's dictum: 'Show me the man and I will find the crime.' Trump's memorandum on Miles Taylor—who as chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration penned the 'Anonymous' New York Times piece in 2018 assuring readers that some insiders were attempting to restrain the president's worst instincts—went even further, accusing Taylor of sowing 'chaos and distrust in government' and closing with an accusation of treason. The prosecutorial power of the state is vast. Even without a conviction, even without an indictment, a criminal investigation can upend a person's life and potentially bankrupt them with legal costs. In the Anglo-American tradition, the danger of overweening state power is cabined in many ways: the requirement of a grand jury, the presumption of innocence, the right to trial by jury, the ban on star chambers, and many other protections. But these all rest ultimately on the public's sense of fairness and what's right. Back to the airport example. Let's assume that someone in the Trump administration decides to harass me. They could invent a crime. They could say that I had spread the 'false and baseless' claim that the 2020 election was not stolen and therefore sowed 'chaos and distrust in government.' Or they could become fanciful and allege that I have terrorist ties, as they said about Rumeysa Öztürk, the Turkish grad student who was hustled off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. What then? Republican members of Congress, if asked about my detention, would say that 'We have to trust the president's instincts.' The Wall Street Journal editorial page would say that this is not ideal because just think of what Democrats might do with this power. And the right-wing media would dredge up every critical word I've ever written about Trump to show that, after all, I had it coming. Would I be able to consult a lawyer? Fortunately, I'm married to one. But I wouldn't be able to count on legal advice from many of the big firms who are doffing their caps to the president. I love to travel but I love to return home even more. The sight of the Stars and Stripes at the airport never fails to move me as I proudly line up in the American passport-holders lane. The flag meant home—but it also meant decency and ironclad adherence to the law. Meant. Share
CBS News
12-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Attorney files motion requesting AG Nessel be disqualified from case against University of Michigan protester
The attorney representing a University of Michigan student charged in connection with 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on campus has filed a motion to disqualify Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel from prosecuting the case. According to court records, attorney Amir Makled filed the motion to recuse Nessel, a Democrat elected as attorney general in 2018, and appoint a special prosecuting attorney on Friday. Makled is representing Samantha Rose Lewis, who is charged with one count each of assaulting, resisting and obstructing a police officer, and trespassing. Nessel filed charges against 11 students in connection with the protests , which involved an encampment set up by students in April. Demonstrators at the time were demanding that the university divest from companies that were financially supporting Israel. The motion cites a news article from The Guardian , which said Nessel's office "has so far charged around 85% of the protesters who were arrested or for whom arrest warrants were requested last school year." The court document also argues that Nessel has "voiced her protests" against U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib's social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war. In November 2024, Nessel and state Sen. Jeremy Moss publicly called on Tlaib to refrain from using language that could potentially incite violence and fuel hate crimes after Tlaib said, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," in a social media post. The Michigan Department of Attorney General filed a petition in March for the state to appoint a special prosecutor in an election fraud investigation involving Hamtramck city councilors . Makled cites the petition in his motion, saying "Attorney General Nessel stated that critics had alleged her office's prosecutions of pro-Palestinian protestors at the University of Michigan were brought "due to bias against Muslims and/or people of Arab descent." The motion says these public actions and statements made by Nessel "raise serious concerns regarding her ability to remain impartial or at least, they create an appearance of impropriety sufficient to require her recusal/disqualification in this matter," and asks for the appointment of a special prosecuting attorney. Kimberly Bush, the director of office of public information and education for the attorney general's office, says the motion contains "numerous known falsehoods." "It is unclear where The Guardian came up with their statistics," Bush said in a written statement. "The Department was referred over 40 cases for review stemming from the protests at the University of Michigan. Of those over 40 cases, 11 were charged for criminal behavior." Officials with the attorney general's office also said Nessel did not protest Tliab's social media. "She responded directly to false accusations of bias made by the Congresswoman," Bush said. The attorney general's office says it will be addressing the motion in court.
