Student protesters selected for investigation drawn from pro-Israel website

Immigration officials relied in part on a shadowy online blacklist to single out pro-Palestinian campus activists for investigation, a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official testified Wednesday.

Peter Hatch, assistant director of intelligence for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), said that he was given a list of names for his team to investigate in March, and "most" of those names came from Canary Mission, a pro-Israel website that is anonymously run.

The senior official testified that the list contained more than 5,000 names, though between 100 and 200 reports on people identified there were ultimately compiled. Analysts working on cases involving counterterrorism, cybercrimes and global trade were moved to the so-called "Tiger Team" to work on compiling reports about demonstrators "because of the workload."

"I was not given a deadline, but I knew...that we needed to work through this expeditiously," Hatch explained.

The testimony came on the third day of a trial over the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activists. It's the first major trial of President Trump's second term, targeting a policy that has led to arrests and efforts to deport foreign-born students and faculty members.

Hatch said that Canary Mission's information was not taken as an "authoritative source" and the government does not work with the individuals who created the website, whose identities he does not know.

The site has been accused of doxxing people protesting Israel's war with Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza but describes its mission as documenting individuals and organizations "that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond."

Though Canary Mission's list helped identify "most" individuals for investigation, Hatch said the team examined leads from "many different sources." That included a similar list from another anonymous group supporting Israel, called Betar.

The reports compiled by the Tiger Team were submitted to the State Department, which would decide whether to take any action.

U.S. District Judge William Young is overseeing the bench trial and will decide whether the administration's "ideological deportation policy" exists and if it is unlawful. The trial is expected to conclude next week.