2 men charged with not dispersing during pro-Palestinian protest at UC Irvine are acquitted

Sean Emery, The Orange County Register on Apr 8, 2026

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Two men accused of failing to follow a police order to leave a high-profile pro-Palestinian protest at the University of California, Irvine were acquitted of criminal charges Tuesday, and a mistrial was declared for a third man after the trio became the first of dozens of protesters to take their controversial cases to trial.

After deliberating for about a day and a half, an Orange County Superior Court jury found Adel Shaker Hijazi, 41, and Jacob Andrew Hernandez, 33, not guilty of misdemeanor charges of failure to disperse from a campus encampment on May 15, 2024.

The jurors deadlocked regarding the same misdemeanor charge for Malik Alrefai, 25, leading Orange County Superior Court Judge Eric Scarbrough to declare a mistrial.

About 50 people were charged in connection to the same UCI protest, all but a few facing the same failure to disperse charges. More than 40 have already resolved their cases, agreeing to take part in a diversion program rather than face a conviction or time behind bars. Others are still awaiting trial.

During a weeklong trial in a Santa Ana courtroom, attorneys representing Hijazi, Alrefai and Hernandez argued that the campus protest had shown no signs of growing violent and that law enforcement had no right to end the demonstrations. Hernandez’s attorney also argued that he was working the day of the protest as a freelance journalist taking photos and video of the demonstration and was covered by state legal protections preventing the press from being charged with failure to disperse.

The defense attorneys described their clients as simply taking part in a peaceful, nonviolent protest and accused law enforcement officials of violating their First Amendment rights.

The prosecution countered that the three men had remained at the encampment for hours after law enforcement officials ordered the protesters to disperse. A former UCI Police Department sergeant testified that officers called for backup after a group began forming a physical barrier with wood pallets and plastic barricades around a campus building, leading the officers to worry that people could be blocked inside.

It wasn’t immediately clear if prosecutors will pursue a retrial for Alrefai. A pretrial hearing in his case is scheduled for April 17.

In the midst of a wave of protests at college campuses across the country, the makeshift encampment at UC Irvine was erected by protesters in late April 2024 and ultimately stood for about two weeks. The protesters sought to force the university to divest from companies and institutions with ties to Israel and weapons manufacturers, to support an end to the Israeli occupation of the Gaza strip and to reinvest funds toward students and campus workers.

The crowd at the encampment swelled to 500 or so people by the afternoon of May 15. There were reports of a small group barricading itself into the adjacent Physical Sciences Lecture Hall.

Officers in riot gear from more than a dozen law enforcement agencies swept through the crowd, making arrests as they forcibly broke up the encampment.

UCI leaders defended the law enforcement sweep, arguing they had exhausted all possible alternatives. And Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer, when announcing the subsequent criminal charges, said that “criminal activity (that) transcends peaceful assembly will not be tolerated.”

But the actions of law enforcement and prosecutors were condemned by civil rights groups and some faculty members as a politically driven effort to silence pro-Palestinian activism on campus. Last year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations — the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization — designated UC Irvine as a “hostile campus” for Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students and faculty, citing a pattern of discriminatory treatment.

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—Staff writer Nathaniel Percy contributed to this report.

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