Washington, DC – The United States government has acknowledged its use of Canary Mission — a shadowy pro-Israel website — to identify pro-Palestine students for deportation, sparking anger and concern by rights advocates.
Activists have long suspected that the administration of US President Donald Trump is gathering information from the Canary Mission website to target students and professors.
But on Wednesday, that suspicion was confirmed when a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official testified in a court case challenging Trump’s efforts to deport pro-Palestinian student protesters.
Peter Hatch, an agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said the department had assembled a specialised group — dubbed a “tiger team” — to work on removing pro-Palestine college students from the country.
He indicated to the court that some tips about students were communicated verbally, before explaining that the team had also combed through the nearly 5,000 profiles Canary Mission had compiled of Israel’s critics.
“You mean someone said, ‘Here is a list that the Canary Mission has put together?’” Judge William Young asked Hatch, according to court transcripts.
The official answered with a simple “yes”.
Heba Gowayed, a sociology professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), said the government’s reliance on an online blacklist that posts personal information to harm and intimidate activists is “absurd and fascist”.
“Canary Mission is a doxxing website that specifically targets people for language that they deem to be pro-Palestinian and therefore, they’ve decided, is anti-Semitic. Its sole purpose is to target and harass people,” Gowayed told media.
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