Chicago office building feared pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Feds tasked counterterrorism team to keep watch
DHS dispatched counterterrorism Fusion Center to track potential pro-Palestinian protests despite lack of specific threats
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) swiftly dispatched a special counterterrorism team to monitor potential pro-Palestinian demonstrations outside of a Chicago office building — despite there being no threats of violence against it.
Greenberg Traurig, a law firm and tenant of 77 W. Wacker Dr. on Chicago’s downtown riverfront, is representing several victims of Hamas’ October 7 attack in Israel, in a lawsuit alleging that two pro-Palestinian activist groups, American Muslims for Palestine and National Students for Justice in Palestine, are propagandists for Hamas. Greenberg Traurig’s participation in the lawsuit spurred security concerns for the building’s head of security, Andrew Franzen, who emailed the DHS on May 2.
“This obviously could put our building at risk of being a potential target of protests/demonstrations or even terrorist acts,” Franzen wrote to DHS professionals Chip Buckley and James Ford. “This seems like the type of information that we should be sharing with our partners like yourselves to be aware of and monitor closely.”
Franzen went on to request that DHS distribute “this information to the proper fusion centers like CPIC.” Fusion Centers are specialized, state-operated centers of law-enforcement collaboration between DHS and local police forces, with a focus on counterterrorism efforts. CPIC — or Crime Prevention and Information Center — is a Fusion Center based in Chicago.
Without asking for evidence of any danger, or for any clarification, Buckley thanked Franzen for his outreach, and told him “I passed your information to the counterterrorism section at CPIC; in addition to having a counterterrorism mission, that team monitors suspicious activity reports throughout the city. They’re now tracking the additional context described below [a description of the lawsuit and its parties]. I’ll also keep an eye out in my agency’s holdings about potential acts of violence targeting firms and organizations affiliated with the Oct 7 victims.”
Franzen clarified in a May 7 email to a Chicago Police Department (CPD) officer that Greenberg Traurig had “not received any specific or direct threats that we know of.”
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American Muslims for Palestine, founded in 2006, is an activist group “dedicated to advancing the movement for justice in Palestine,” per its website. The October 7 lawsuit alleges that the organization was “founded from the ashes” of the now-defunct Islamic Association of Palestine, which was “found civilly liable for providing material support to Hamas,” per the lawsuit.
Christina Jump, an attorney representing American Muslims for Palestine, told Noir News that the group “did not derive from [Islamic Association of Palestine], or any other organization.”
She added that “[American Muslims for Palestine]’s two founders, attorney Munjed Ahmad of Wisconsin and Dr. Hatem Bazian of California, held no positions with [Islamic Association of Palestine] (an Illinois corporation) when it did exist.”
Jump has previously acknowledged that Osama Abuirshaid, Executive Director of American Muslims for Palestine, ran Islamic Association of Palestine’s internal newspaper, but contends that efforts to link the two organizations via this connection are overblown, per USA Today.
“He ran the newspaper, because he’s a journalist, and he was paid to operate the newspaper, and he was paid by [Islamic Association of Palestine],” she told USA Today. “He was not a decision maker for [Islamic Association of Palestine].”
National Students for Justice in Palestine is one of the best known academy-focused pro-Palestinian advocacy groups, consisting of chapters across the globe. The group has come into focus in the past year due to its involvement in supporting student encampments pushing universities to sever ties with the state of Israel. The group supports the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The Anti-Defamation League has alleged both American Muslims for Palestine and National Students for Justice in Palestine have promoted antisemitism, which the groups have denied.
Regardless of the allegations, made as part of a civil suit, the emails obtained by Noir do not provide an explanation as to why law enforcement was so quick to task a counterterrorism team with monitoring potential demonstrations despite the lack of any threat. The rights to speech and assembly are protected by the First Amendment. As such, a demonstration wouldn’t be criminal, let alone terroristic.
It’s also unclear what kind of “tracking” CPD, DHS and CPIC engaged in. The emails insinuate that law enforcement would be vigilant against pro-Palestinian protests or attacks targeting the building. As the “context” Franzen provided DHS included a press release describing the lawsuit and its parties, it’s possible the CPIC counterterrorism team began targeted monitoring of members of American Muslims for Palestine, National Students for Justice in Palestine and other activist groups with sympathies toward the Palestinian cause.
This possibility is supported by another fact revealed in the emails. In the lead up to a May 8 visit to Chicago by President Joe Biden, Secret Service Special Agent Robert Norman emailed members of CPD noting that he’d become aware of a planned pro-Palestinian protest against Biden. He went on to request that CPD conduct social media monitoring of groups involved in the protest.
“If your department has any analytical or social media awareness capabilities, I put together the following list of questions that we would be interested in,” Norman wrote on May 7. “Are the accounts making the post or commenting known to your Department? If so, what are their histories? Are there any follow-up posts to announce the time & location of the demo? How many participants plan to attend? What method(s) of demonstration do they plan to use? What equipment will they have? E.g., megaphone, banners, signs, etc. Has it attracted any media attention? Any other information you feel may impact the visit of POTUS to Chicago.”
The groups CPD was tasked with monitoring, per a subsequent May 8 email from Norman, included American Muslims for Palestine and Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as the U.S. Palestinian Community Network and Jisoor USA.
The degree to which social media surveillance of groups protesting near the President is warranted, or at least understandable, is a matter for debate. But the tracking revealed in the May 2024 emails does demonstrate American law enforcement’s willingness to monitor American Muslims for Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine and other pro-Palestinian activists without evidence of a specific threat.
DHS and CPD did not comment when asked for specifics about and the reasoning behind the monitoring.
For Jump, the attorney representing American Muslims for Palestine, the revelations in the emails, which Noir provided her to review, were disappointing.
The specter of law enforcement engaging in direct monitoring of American Muslims for Palestine is “a real possibility,” Jump said, which is especially disconcerting given that law enforcement acknowledged in the emails that, since 2009, American Muslims for Palestine’s protests have “been peaceful and have not led to arrests or incidents.”
“I’m both disturbed and disappointed to see this string, because I think it shows a very clear path of how all it takes is an allegation to get someone, a person or an organization, or people associated with an organization, under pretty serious clouds, without having to prove a single thing,” Jump said, referring to how the accusations in the lawsuit, without being proven in a court of law, seem to have caused law enforcement to treat American Muslims for Palestine like potential terrorists.
She continued, “Pro-Palestinian individuals and organizations are presumed by a lot of government officials, by a lot of law enforcement officials to have bad intent until proven innocent. That’s not how it’s supposed to go, and that appears to be what happened here.”
Chip Gibbons, Policy Director at the civil liberties nonprofit Defending Rights and Dissent, said the emails align with a long history in the United States of law enforcement efforts to chill pro-Palestinian political speech.
“Historically, a significant amount of counterterrorism has been directed at monitoring political speech,” Gibbons said. “Attacks on Palestinian speech and Palestinian organizing has been key to driving this revival of the McCarthyite project under the label of counterterrorism.”
National Students for Justice in Palestine could not be reached for comment.
Andrew Franzen could not be reached for comment.