Canary Mission, is a shadowy website whose goal is to expose anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment on college campuses. It also posts photos and social media profiles of pro-Palestinian academics and logs their protest activities.
Newly unsealed court documents show that the Trump administration relied on a controversial, anonymously run pro-Israel website to help identify pro-Palestinian academics for possible deportation. The site, Canary Mission, has long been accused of doxxing activists by publishing their names, photos, and social media activity.
The records indicate that the Department of Homeland Security formed a special “tiger team” of intelligence analysts to compile a list of 100 foreign students and scholars who had participated in pro-Palestine protests. According to a deposition, Canary Mission helped identify 75 of those individuals.
The website, which claims its mission is to expose antisemitism and anti-Israel activism on U.S. college campuses, denied any formal ties to the Trump administration. “We had no contact with this administration or the previous administration,” Canary Mission said, according to Politico. In a statement, the group said it monitors hate “across the political spectrum, including the far-right, far-left, and anti-Israel activists.”
Still, immigration attorneys and pro-Palestinian advocates raised concerns that federal officials were outsourcing intelligence gathering to private actors. They feared names were simply pulled from Canary Mission without independent vetting. Homeland Security official Peter Hatch testified that while many names came from the site, the department conducted its own reviews. “Canary Mission is not a part of the U.S. government,” Hatch said. “We don’t take it as an authoritative source, and we don’t know who runs it.”
He acknowledged, however, that the list of suspected activists was built using multiple online sources, including another group called Betar US, which uses the slogan “Jews fight back” and publicly profiles pro-Palestinian advocates. The group claimed on X (formerly Twitter) that it had submitted a “deport list” to Trump officials shortly after Trump’s return to the White House in January.
The court documents also reveal that senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller was heavily involved in efforts to revoke visas from pro-Palestinian students and scholars.
One case that drew legal attention was that of Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate who was arrested and held in an immigration detention center for over three months. His legal team filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to uncover whether Canary Mission played a role in his targeting. The attorneys sought to expose alleged coordination between federal agencies and private groups that had flagged Khalil and others for deportation because of their advocacy for Palestinian human rights.
Anthropologist Nadia Abu El-Haj, a professor at Barnard College and Columbia University, told The New York Times that her profile was listed on Canary Mission, though as a U.S. citizen she felt safe speaking out. However, she noted that during the Trump administration’s crackdown in March, many students retreated from public life after their photos and personal details were posted online.
