Immigration officers participated in a shady online blacklist Pro-Filistini campus workers For InvestigationA senior immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) officer testified on Wednesday.
Pitter Hatch, Assistant Director of Intelligence for Homeland Security Investigation (HSI), said that he was given a list of names for his team for investigation in March, and from the names “most” came from the “Canary Mission” from the names, a pro -Israel website that runs anonymously.
The senior official testified that there were more than 5,000 names in the list, although there was finally compiled between 100 and 200 reports on those identified. Analysts working on cases related to terrorism, cybercrime and global trade were taken to the so -called “Tiger Team” to work to report about protesters. ,
Hatch explained, “I was not given a time limit, but I knew … that we needed to work fast.”
Testes came on the third day of the trump administration testing Crackdown on Palestinian Campus workersThis is the first major test of President Trump’s second term, which targets a policy Led to arrest And Attempt to deport Students and faculty members of foreign origin.
Hatch said that the information of the canary mission was not taken as an “official source” and the government does not work with the individuals who created the website, whose identity they do not know.
The site has been accused of doxing people opposing the Israeli war with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza, but describes their mission as a document of individuals and organizations “which promote hatred from North American college complexes and beyond USA, Israel and Jews.”
Although the list of Canary Mission helped identify “most” individuals for investigation, Hatch said the team investigated the lead from “many different sources”. This included a similar list of another unnamed group supporting Israel, called Betar.
The reports compiled by the Tiger team were handed over to the state department, which will decide whether to take any action or not.
US District Judge William Young Bench is overseeing the trial and will decide that the “ideological exile” of the administration is present and if it is illegal. The test is expected to end next week.
