Tlaib earned a BA in Political Science/Government from Wayne State University in 1998, and a JD from Thomas Cooley Law School in 2004. She subsequently found employment as a social worker before taking jobs at the International Institute of Metro Detroit, the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, and the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice — where a majority of her co-workers were, by Tlaib’s description, “pretty much socialists” whom she “love[d].”

In October 2006, Tlaib was a guest columnist who contributed an op-ed piece titled “Bills Must Stop Deportations for Minor Offenses” to The Final Call, a newspaper and website headed by Nation Of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. In her article, Tlaib lamented that immigrants were in constant fear of being arbitrarily deported for what she described as small violations such as paperwork errors.

In 2008 Tlaib was the Arab-American outreach coordinator for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in Michigan. Later that year, Tlaib herself was elected, as a Democrat, to the 12th District seat in the Michigan House of Representatives, where she would serve from 2009-15. On March 11, 2010, the Detroit News reported that Tlaib’s father, Harbi Elabed, was accusing his daughter of having lied “big-time to get elected” during her 2008 campaign. According to Elabed, Tlaib had falsely claimed on an election affidavit to be a resident of the 12th District (in southwest Detroit) – a requirement for anyone seeking that office – when in fact she lived in the city of Dearborn, which was not a part of the District. Tlaib denied her father’s allegations.