The Trump administration has relied on a shadowy website accused of doxxing pro-Palestine academics to target them for deportation, a government official revealed during court testimony.
Peter Hatch, a senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, testified in federal court Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security used information gleaned from opaque websites, including Canary Mission.
The lawsuit, brought by the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, is challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to deport pro-Palestinian student activists.
The suit was filed in March after immigration authorities arrested Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, the first target of Trump's effort to deport non-citizen students with pro-Palestinian views.
The Trump administration’s “ideological deportation” policy is a violation of the First Amendment, the groups say.
Canary Mission says it documents individuals and groups “who promote hatred of the U.S.A., Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.” Critics have highlighted the site’s lack of transparency over who funds and operates it.
In previous reporting, ICE has said that it doesn’t rely on lists from Canary Mission, but Wednesday’s hearing proved otherwise.
A “tiger team” of intelligence analysts was assembled by DHS who compiled reports on about 100 international students and academics based on a list of 5,000 people identified on the Canary Mission website, the court heard.
“Many of the names or even most of the names came from that website, but we were getting names and leads from many different websites,” Hatch, assistant director for intelligence at Homeland Security Investigations, testified Wednesday. “We received information on the same protesters from multiple sources, but Canary Mission was the most inclusive. The lists came in from all different directions.”
Judge William G. Young pressed Hatch on how many individuals were profiled on the site. “So that’s over 5,000 people, is that right?” Young asked.
“Yes, sir, which shows why we needed a tiger team,” Hatch replied. “A normal division, a normal unit or section or group of analysts operating in a normal organizational construct couldn’t handle that workload.”
Hatch added that information obtained from Canary Mission was corroborated before being included in official reports.
“Canary Mission is not a part of the U.S. government,” Hatch said. “It is not information that we would take as an authoritative source. We don’t work with the individuals who create the website. I don’t know who creates the website.”
It is not clear whether the U.S. government is still using Canary Mission to gather names.
Canary Mission said it has had “no contact with either this administration or the previous administration”, in a statement to The Independent.
“All our profiles are available via our public website,” the group added.
The Independent has contacted the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
The trial began Monday at the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts and is due to hear further testimony from Hatch and Amy Greer, a lawyer for Khalil, on Thursday.
Since Khalil’s arrest, the administration has canceled the visas of hundreds of other students and scholars and ordered the arrest of some, including Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who was taken into custody by masked, plainclothes agents after co-writing an opinion piece criticizing her school's response to Israel's war in Gaza.
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