Immigration Officials Used Shadowy Pro-Israel Group to Target Student Activists

An senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement official testified in federal court on Wednesday that his office had used opaque pro-Israel blacklisting websites to help target international student activists for investigation and possible deportation.

The admission by Peter Hatch, the assistant director of the Homeland Security Investigations department within ICE, appeared to be the first time that an administration official had acknowledged taking cues from the shadowy groups behind the sites, including Canary Mission, which has been accused of doxxing individuals engaged in pro-Palestinian activism.

Mr. Hatch’s testimony came during the third day of trial proceedings in a case that has emerged as a major challenge to the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students.

Lawyers representing the academic associations that sued the administration called Mr. Hatch as a witness to bolster their argument that detaining prominent critics of Israel was part of an official policy to chill political speech unaligned with President Trump’s agenda.

The government has denied that any official policy exists. Mr. Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other administration officials have consistently referred to the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that swept across college campuses in response to the war in Gaza as detrimental to American interests. Mr. Rubio has denounced the campus protests as displays of support for Hamas, whose attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, set off the Israeli campaign in Gaza. The United States considers Hamas a terrorist organization.

Mr. Hatch’s testimony helped considerably to advance what is known about the sudden burst of student arrests that began in March of this year, when half a dozen noncitizen academics — including some of the most visible leaders in the pro-Palestinian movement — were abruptly whisked away by masked immigration officers.