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canary mission
DHS Official Admits Agency Used Secretive Pro-Israel Group's Blacklist to Target Foreign Students
"The U.S. government is laundering repression through a private blacklist," said one pro-Palestinian news outlet.
Jul 10, 2025
Confirming what students detained by the Trump administration have suspected for months, a senior homeland security official on Wednesday admitted for the first time that his agency had used a website run by a secretive pro-Israel group that compiles "blacklists" of pro-Palestinian students as it worked to carry out President Donald Trump's policy of arresting international students for their protest activities earlier this year.
In a courtroom in Massachusetts during a hearing on a Harvard University faculty group's lawsuit over Trump's attempts to deport pro-Palestinian students, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Peter Hatch testified under oath that a task force he formed in March scoured a list compiled by Canary Mission, an operation linked to Israel's intelligence agencies, to compile reports on the students on the list.
Hatch, the assistant director of ICE's homeland security investigations department, said the team was ordered to rush an analysis of roughly 5,000 students listed on Canary Mission's website, which includes photos and names of students who have taken part in "anti-Israel events." One student listed participated in a student walkout at Harvard University in support of boycotting Israel, and another attended a rally organized by Jews for Cease-fire.
Such allegations were evidently enough to warrant Hatch's team compiling reports on 100-200 of the non-citizen students listed on Canary Mission's website. Hatch said the team relied on Canary Mission's list as well as a list compiled by another pro-Israel group, Betar Worldwide.
Hatch told lawyers for the plaintiffs in the American Association of University Professors' (AAUP) lawsuit and Judge William G. Young of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts that his team's reports detailed the students' employment and travel history, criminal activity, and alleged support for terrorist groups such as Hamas. He said the students' use of phrases including "Free Palestine" were included in the reports as well.
The Trump administration has claimed students have shown "support for terrorist groups" simply by participating in protests against Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza, where at least 57,762 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023. Nearly 70% of those killed in Gaza were verified by the United Nations to be women and children as of November 2024, even as both Democratic and Republican U.S. lawmakers have claimed Israel is targeting Hamas.
Hatch's team sent the reports on students to the U.S. State Department, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio later said Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil's participation in protests was detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests, after Khalil was arrested by ICE. Khalil was ultimately detained in Louisiana for three months.
Hatch testified that the ICE office used the lists compiled by Canary Mission and Betar "without a firm understanding of the methodology through which individuals came to be included on either record," according to The New York Times.
Five of the students included in the reports sent to the State Department have been named in the AAUP's lawsuit as non-citizen students who were targeted by ICE for their pro-Palestinian speech.
The AAUP and other plaintiffs in the case argue the Trump administration has imposed an "ideological deportation policy" by detaining and trying to remove Khalil, Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, and others.
Students have posited for months that Canary Mission's blacklists were likely involved in the administration's rounding up of pro-Palestinian organizers, with Sophie Hurwitz reporting at Mother Jones this week that Öztürk was detained only "after being smeared on Canary Mission's website, being falsely labeled as being antisemitic."
A judge who ordered the release of another student activist, Efe Ercelik of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said Ercelik had been jailed "almost exclusively" because he was included in blacklists compiled by Canary Mission and Betar.
Khalil's lawyers filed a Freedom of Information Act request after his arrest, seeking information about Canary Mission's role in his targeting by ICE. The group's anonymously run website includes an extensive report on Khalil's expressions of support for Palestinians and his protest activities.
But Hatch's testimony marks the first time Canary Mission's involvement in the targeting of students has been acknowledged by the administration.
Young ordered the Trump administration to provide partially redacted reports that Hatch's team compiled on students to the plaintiffs' lawyers on Wednesday evening.
As James Bamford wrote at The Nation in December 2023, Canary Mission is "a key intelligence asset for the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, a highly secretive intelligence organization that is largely focused on the United States." A profile of Palestinian American student Lara Alqasem was compiled by Canary Mission and used to prevent her from entering Israel in 2018; Alqasem was planning to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but Israel attempted to bar her from doing so because she was the chapter president of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Florida.
The pro-Palestinian news outlet Mondoweiss said the information disclosed by Hatch on Wednesday "is bigger than one trial."
"The U.S. government is laundering repression through a private blacklist," said Mondoweiss. "It's criminalizing dissent, undermining free speech, and exporting Israel's surveillance playbook into U.S. policy."
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Mahmoud Khalil Team Files FOIA Request to Expose Trump Collusion With Anti-Palestinian 'Agents of Repression'
One attorney for the targeted U.S. resident accused the doxxing groups of "weaponizing inflammatory rhetoric and conflating criticism of Israel with hate speech in order to chill activism for Palestinian rights."
May 29, 2025
Mahmoud Khalil's legal team on Thursday demanded records from the federal government to expose the Trump administration's "collusion with anti-Palestinian doxxing groups" that have worked to get people including their client deported from the United States.
“For years, these anti-Palestinian doxxing groups have served as agents of repression, weaponizing inflammatory rhetoric and conflating criticism of Israel with hate speech in order to chill activism for Palestinian rights," said Ayla Kadah, an attorney and justice fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), one of the groups representing Khalil, in a statement.
"Now, evidence seems to point to the Trump administration colluding with them as they escalate their crusade to target noncitizens for detention and deportation, with Mahmoud Khalil serving as their latest target," Kadah continued. "Mahmoud deserves answers, and so does the public."
"Evidence seems to point to the Trump administration colluding with them as they escalate their crusade to target noncitizens for detention and deportation."
Khalil is a legal permanent resident of Palestinian origin and a former Columbia University student organizer who has been in federal immigration custody since being accosted by plainclothes agents with his pregnant wife, Noor Abdalla, outside their New York City apartment in March. Abdalla, a U.S. citizen, gave birth to their son while her husband remained detained in Louisiana.
So far, the Trump administration has maintained its effort to deport Khalil over his on-campus activism against Israel's U.S.-backed assault on the Gaza Strip, claiming that despite his green card, he can be removed from the country because U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has "reasonable grounds to believe that Khalil's presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences."
CCR sent the 15-page records request to the U.S. departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Justice, and State, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The group also publicly released the document, which states that "Khalil has long been targeted by anti-Palestinian organizations, including individuals and groups who have sought his deportation or later taken credit for his arrest and detention."
"Days prior to his arrest by ICE, he sought Columbia University protection from these hostile groups, seeing that the groups were calling for the federal government to effectuate his deportation," notes the Freedom of Information Act filing. "In this FOIA request, Khalil seeks information that would illuminate the reported origins of his targeting and the bases of the Rubio determination."
"Specifically, he seeks information that would document and expose the reported collaboration between federal officials and private, anti-Palestinian organizations who have identified, doxxed, and reported him and others for purposes of securing the deportation of student activists advocating on behalf of Palestinian human rights," the document says.
The filing lists "the most prominent groups" subject to the FOIA request—Betar USA, CAMERA, Canary Mission, Capital Research Center, Columbia Alumni for Israel, Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus, Middle East Forum, and Shirion Collective—and details their targeting of Khalil, his university, and other individuals dealing similar cases, including Badar Khan Suri, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Rümeysa Öztürk, who have all been released from ICE custody recently.
"The correlation is clear, and not a coincidence: To date, not a single reported visa revocation and detention of an individual based on pro-Palestine activism occurred absent prior doxxing by one of these groups."
"Patterns of arrests and detention by ICE and DHS strongly suggest that these federal agencies are acting at the encouragement of the groups," the document says. "The groups also appear to be coordinating amongst themselves and amplifying each other's efforts to solicit federal agencies to punish individuals for protesting for Palestinian rights."
"These groups often take credit for ICE and DHS's adverse actions against those they have identified or reported, further corroborating the connection between the groups' targeting and the agencies' punitive actions," the filing adds. "The correlation is clear, and not a coincidence: To date, not a single reported visa revocation and detention of an individual based on pro-Palestine activism occurred absent prior doxxing by one of these groups."
The filing was first reported by Zeteo. A State Department spokesperson told the outlet, "Given our commitment to and responsibility for national security, the department uses all available tools to receive and review concerning information when considering visa revocations about possible ineligibilities."
CCR's request for records came a day after U.S. District Court Judge Michael Farbiarz in New Jersey ruled that Rubio likely violated constitutional law in his attempt to use Section 1227 of the U.S. Code to deport Khalil. Despite this, the judge declined to release Khalil on bail or to move him to a facility in New Jersey, closer to his family.
In response to Wednesday's ruling, Khalil's legal team said that "we will work as quickly as possible to provide the court the additional information it requested supporting our effort to free Mahmoud or otherwise return him to his wife and newborn son."
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Tufts PhD Student and Farmworker Organizer Latest Targets as ICE Agents Operate 'Like Kidnappers'
"Immigrants are not the enemy, we are part of the worker movement towards justice which includes fair wages, healthcare, education, housing, and solidarity," said one social justice group.
Mar 26, 2025
The Trump administration sparked a fresh wave of fury over its deportation agenda with the Tuesday detentions of Tufts University Ph.D. student Rumeysa Ozturk in Massachusetts and Alfredo "Lelo" Juarez Zeferino, a farmworker activist in Washington state.
The Boston Globe reported that Ozturk, a Turkish national, is a "student at the Tufts's doctoral program for Child Study and Human Development, according to her LinkedIn, and graduated with a master's degree from the Teachers College at Columbia University."
The Fulbright Scholar is one of several foreign academics—including multiple from Columbia in New York—targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after speaking out about the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip.
According to the Globe:
Ozturk does not appear to be a leading figure of the Pro-Palestinian protest movement at Tufts. But according to Ozturk's attorney, the student's photo and other identifying information were recently posted on Canary Mission, a website that documents individuals and organizations it considers to be antisemitic. Pro-Palestinian protesters say the site has doxxed and targeted them.
In March 2024, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in the Tufts Daily, the university's student paper, criticizing the university's response to the pro-Palestinian movement and efforts by members of the student body to sever its ties to Israel.
"In a statement provided through her attorney, community activists said that Ozturk was 'ambushed' by ICE agents on the way to an Iftar dinner with friends after leaving her apartment," the newspaper noted. "Neighbors reported that unmarked cars had allegedly been surveilling the location for two days before apprehending her on the street."
Responding to reporting on social media, the group RootsAction
said: "Another pro-Palestine student kidnapped off the streets and disappeared by the Feds. Rumeysa Ozturk was abducted last night by ICE after leaving her apartment to go to Iftar dinner."
Jonathan Cohn, political director for the organization Progressive Mass,
declared that "the Trump administration's ICE goons are acting like kidnappers because that's what they are."
Authorities faced similar backlash for their actions toward Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident who last year helped lead protests and finished his graduate studies at Columbia. When Khalil's family released a video of his arrest earlier this month, his wife, Noor Abdalla, said, "This felt like a kidnapping because it was: Officers in plain clothes—who refused to show us a warrant, speak with our attorney, or even tell us their names—forced my husband into an unmarked car and took him away from me."
Not long after Khalil's detention, masked agents "abducted" Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. One of Suri's attorneys called his case "emblematic of a broader strategy by the Trump administration to suppress voices—citizens and noncitizens alike—who dare to speak out against governmental policies."
An unverified video that appears to show Ozturk being taken into custody circulated on social media Wednesday.
Turkish PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by masked U.S. ICE agents yesterday while heading to an Iftar dinner in Massachusetts.
Ozturk, who held a valid F-1 visa and studied at Tufts University, was reportedly being watched for two days before her arrest.
She was on the… pic.twitter.com/eL92GyKE3J
— Clash Report (@clashreport) March 26, 2025
In a Tuesday email that did not name Ozturk, Tufts' president Sunil Kumar said: "We received reports that an international graduate student was taken into custody this evening by federal authorities outside an off-campus apartment building in Somerville. The university had no pre-knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event."
"From what we have been told subsequently, the student's visa has been terminated," Kumar continued. "We realize that tonight's news will be distressing to some members of our community, particularly the members of our international community. We will continue to provide information, support, and resources in the days ahead as more details become available to us."
Supporters of Ozturk are planning a rally in Powder House Square Park at 5:30 pm Eastern on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Juarez "was detained violently by ICE," according to a Tuesday Facebook post from the social justice group Community to Community Development. "He was on his way to drop off his partner at her workplace, and ICE agents broke his car window when he tried to exercise his rights."
"We feel this is a targeted attack on farmworker leadership, and we must not allow this to continue," the group said, urging supporters to contact elected officials in Washington to demand his release. "Lelo's leadership and activism and leadership have been vital in protecting farmworkers and immigrants' rights and well-being."
"As unions, community organizations, student groups, and people who have decency, We Demand That ICE stays out of Washington and let workers be at peace," the group added. "Immigrants are not the enemy, we are part of the worker movement towards justice which includes fair wages, healthcare, education, housing, and solidarity."
The group's founder, Rosalinda Guillen, told The Seattle Times that Juarez, a 25-year-old berry picker and member of the Indigenous Mexican Mixteco community, has organized on behalf of farmworker rights in the state since he was just 14.
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) 3000 said in a statement that "we're furious over these credible reports of immigration enforcement violently detaining Alfredo 'Lelo' Juarez Zeferino, a longtime labor leader who fought for farmworkers and immigrant rights and who helped expose the existence of the very same unmarked ICE facility in Ferndale where he was reportedly held this afternoon."
"In response, our union members grabbed bullhorns and traveled directly to the facility to protest this injustice. We will continue to show up to worker-led actions as long as it takes," the union added. "By targeting workers like Lelo—and, reportedly, a union lab tech at the University of Washington—the Trump administration clearly aims to terrorize immigrant workers no matter how they came to this country. We will not stand for it."
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