Newly unsealed court documents have revealed that the Trump administration created a special team to identify and deport, targeting around 100 foreign students and scholars.
According to Politico, the Department of Homeland Security formed a “tiger team” of intelligence analysts who created files on these academics. The effort was heavily supported by top Trump aide Stephen Miller, who participated in weekly conference calls lasting between 15 minutes to an hour with various government departments, consistent with the administration’s systematic approach to immigration enforcement.
Based on court records, more than 75 percent of the people targeted were identified through Canary Mission, a controversial website that tracks pro-Palestinian activists on college campuses. The website, which operates anonymously and has been criticized for doxxing, claims it had “no contact with this administration or the previous administration.”
White House involvement shows deeper connections than previously known
Court records show that John Armstrong, acting chief of the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, had “at least a dozen” conversations with White House officials about the student deportation program. The full extent of the White House’s involvement remains unclear due to executive privilege claims protecting Miller’s communications.
Why were the pro-Palestinian “academics” using “shadowy websites?
— Clara Winslow (@clara_winslow) July 9, 2025
Do they have something to hide?
Peter Hatch, assistant director for intelligence at Homeland Security Investigations, confirmed in court that Canary Mission was their main source of information. He stated that while the website contained reports on more than 5,000 people, any information taken from it had to be verified independently.
The deportation effort targeted foreign-born academics who were legally living and studying at American universities on student visas or green cards, reflecting Trump’s expanded ICE authority to revoke student visas for various reasons. Secretary of State Marco Rubio used rare immigration law provisions to try to deport scholars by claiming their presence conflicted with American foreign policy interests.
The case is now being tried in federal court in Boston, where Judge William Young is determining whether the Trump administration violated the First Amendment by targeting academics based on their political views. The trial has revealed that administration officials struggled to define what exactly constituted antisemitism or support for Hamas when making deportation decisions.
