Yousef Rabhi Wants Ann Arbor to Start a War With ICE

Bringing the chaos and confrontation of Minneapolis to Ann Arbor is quite a campaign promise. Yet, it is the heart of former state representative and multiple-term county commissioner Yousef Rabhi’s campaign for Ann Arbor mayor.

A member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and a staffer for the Michigan Nurses Association, he has made a series of incendiary statements about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that he acknowledged might make Washtenaw County’s attorney squirm. 

Rabhi is playing with fire and knows it. Rabhi is clearly alluding to armed resistance when he talks about militarization. When asked if he consulted city employee unions, Rabhi did not respond to Michigan Enjoyer.

He appears to be genuine, crying about his own immigrant father, now a citizen, during one commission meeting. Voters should take his rhetoric at face value.

Rabhi is running as an “activist” and has arrest credentials to back up his claim. On April 2, 2007, Rabhi was arrested for occupying the office of then University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman. Now Rabhi is a regular at Ann Arbor rallies, bullhorn in hand. 

He unites resistance liberal boomers with a younger campus Left, just as extreme and inflexible in their ideas as their aged comrades who still nurse political hangovers from the 1960s and 1970s.

Rabhi has long been involved in politics and has done little else in his career. After college, Rabhi worked as an outreach assistant for the City of Ann Arbor and then as a volunteer coordinator for the University of Michigan. 

He served on the Washtenaw County Commission from 2011-2015 before his election to the Michigan House of Representatives, where he served for six years and ended his service as House Democratic Floor Leader.

After his time in the House, Rabhi returned to the Washtenaw County Commission in 2023 and began working as legislative director for the Michigan Nurses Association.

Rabhi’s latest activism is against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It has become nearly universal in the Democratic Party that ICE must be condemned and demonized. Outlier voices like Rabhi’s, apparently calling for violent obstruction and resistance, may be growing in prominence.

When Haley Stevens tried to humanize federal law enforcement personnel after a recent visit to a detention facility, she was ridiculed. Rabhi seems less inclined to look for humanity in ICE agents, preferring to see them as a nameless and faceless enemy to fight. 

He has called them Nazis, comparing officers to a regime that engaged in the horrific, systematic, and industrial-scale mass murder of Jewish men, women, and children. "When the Nazis come to Ann Arbor," Rabhi said, speaking about an anti-ICE resolution during a commission meeting, "we are going to have to stand as a community to face them."

He went on to say, "It doesn't just mean non-cooperation, it has to mean actively working against what ICE is doing. It has to mean that our law enforcement agencies in this county treat them like a terrorist organization, like a gang coming into our community.”

Rabhi, like so many progressives, has constructed an inverse reality. Speaking in front of signs that read "F*** ICE" and "See You At Nuremberg F***ers" in late January, Rabhi claimed that the United States “created the Department of Homeland Security to inflict racism on this country.” 

According to sources who spoke with Enjoyer, Rabhi’s latest ICE outburst reportedly occurred during the Feb. 14 meeting of the Ann Arbor Democratic Party, where Rabhi told the audience that garbage and fire trucks should be used to block ICE operations. 

When asked by Michigan Enjoyer about Rabhi’s statement regarding garbage and fire trucks, Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor, who was in attendance at the meeting, responded: “ICE is corrupt and should be abolished. We will do everything we can to fight the administration's campaign of fear and chaos. Our police officers have a duty to intervene and deescalate if federal agents commit criminal harm, and AAPD will do its duty.” 

But Taylor made clear that he does not support Rabhi’s plan to use city employees to obstruct federal law enforcement operations: “Our firefighters, solid waste drivers, and other city workers are not toy soldiers for the mayor to order about.

“When these union members signed their contracts, service as human shields was not in the job description,” Taylor said. “Deploying these workers to obstruct or block federal civil immigration enforcement would put them at great physical and legal risk, and would be a clear breach of contract and a profound breach of trust with our employees.”

Rabhi has a history of extreme rhetoric that at a minimum suggests a desire for confrontation, even violence. During a County Commission meeting held on Jan. 21, Rabhi made repeated reference to militarized police equipment. 

Rabhi said, “The only reason we should have [militarized equipment] is to make sure that ICE is held at bay, to be honest with you. That's the only reason we can offer.”

Rabhi’s rhetoric fits an emerging pattern from the DSA as the organization veers away from its social-democratic roots toward revolution with violence. Stu Smith writing in City Journal recently exposed the organization’s drift toward “illiberal” extremism. 

According to Smith, DSA’s governing board approved a Maoist with a history of violent rhetoric for membership in an internal group designed to “prepare the organization for a national uprising against federal agents and police brutality.”

Ann Arbor Democratic primary voters may think they are ready to pay the price for Rabhi’s ideological commitments, though adopting a path of escalation and direct conflict risks real harm to the community, potentially turning Ann Arbor into another activist-driven spectacle like Minneapolis.

For the sake of the city's residents, their peace and safety, hope and pray that Ann Arbor avoids becoming the next stage for this kind of political theater with real and senseless consequences.

Rabhi's rhetoric may appeal to the hardcore Ann Arbor activist base, but if his plans are enacted, the consequences will fall heavily on normal citizens, city workers, police, and businesses.

While Rabhi and his activist class move on to their next cause, ordinary people will be left to deal with the nightmare reality of his resistance dreams: barricades, violence, and a less safe, less solvent, and less functional city.

Ann Arborites must believe DSA Democrats like Yousef Rabhi when they reveal their intentions.

Commissioner Rabhi did not reply to multiple requests for comment on this story.