Latest news with #CanaryMission
The Hill
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Judge weighs reality of Trump ‘ideological' deportation policy as activists crackdown trial ends
A federal judge on Monday questioned the true nature of the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activists during closing arguments of a bench trial over the controversial arrests. U.S. District Judge William Young, an appointee of former President Reagan, must determine whether the so-called 'ideological deportation policy' exists, such that the administration singled out campus activists critical of Israel's war in Gaza unlawfully. The plaintiffs, who make up several university associations, argued that the administration's policy is to revoke the visas and green cards of noncitizens based on their pro-Palestinian advocacy in aim of chilling speech. 'It is stifling dissent, your honor,' said Alexandra Conlon, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. 'That's the goal.' But the Justice Department called the suggestion 'silly,' contending that the trial evidence demonstrated no such policy exists. 'This policy is a product of the imagination and creative conjuring of the plaintiffs,' said DOJ lawyer William Kanellis. The arguments cap a roughly two-week trial over the crackdown, namely the arrests of and efforts to deport foreign-born students and faculty members linked to campus demonstrations. It was the first major trial of President Trump's second administration. Across several days, green card-holding professors at U.S. universities took the stand to testify that the high-profile arrests of outspoken students, like former Columbia University pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, made them fearful and stifled their speech. On Monday, Conlon argued that was the administration's goal. She referenced statements made by Trump and other officials lauding the arrests and said they were 'designed to terrorize' those who share the views of those who were arrested. She also pointed to testimony from a senior Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), official that 'most' names his team was directed to investigate in March came from Canary Mission, a pro-Israel online blacklist that is anonymously run. The site has been accused of doxxing people protesting Israel's war with Palestinian militant group Hamas 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.' Conlon called the group 'extremist.' 'The fact that's the pool of people the government started with shows you what the point of this policy was,' she said. Young questioned whether the trial evidence showed Canary Mission is 'extremist' and said it seems 'perfectly appropriate' for the government to take leads from any source, noting that leads frequently come from a 'wrongdoer' or 'rival gang.' But Conlon said those leads relate to alleged lawbreaking, where here, the leads amount only to criticism of Israel or the U.S. 'That's how you end up with someone like Ms. Ozturk being described as pro-Hamas,' she added, a reference to the student's arrest being publicly linked only to an op-ed urging her university's divestment from Israel. Secretary of State Marco Rubio deemed several of the campus demonstrators threats to the nation's foreign policy, invoking a statute that makes deportable any noncitizen whose 'presence and activities in the United States' is thought to have 'potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.' In a memo explaining the apparent threat posed by Khalil, Rubio cited the student's beliefs as justification for his deportation. Young later expressed having 'trouble' with the apparent policy. Without making any formal findings, he said it seems to him that the new administration is implementing new foreign policy within the existing legal framework – efforts that fall squarely within executive powers. The Justice Department argued that's exactly right. Ethan Kanter, another DOJ lawyer, said that noncitizens do not have equivalent rights under the First Amendment. The nature of those rights are 'context dependent' and tied to 'competing government interests in play.' 'That is what these cases demonstrate,' Kanter said, though noting that the judge does not have to rule on that matter to decide the case in the government's favor. Young zeroed in on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)'s use of masks as a cause of concern, saying he's not aware of any other law enforcement agencies in the U.S. that allow the practice. He signaled disbelief in the government's contention that the agents were protecting their identities, instead suggesting that the 'common sense' interpretation might be that their objective is to 'spread fear.' 'Perhaps they're afraid what they're being called upon to do is of concern,' the judge said. Kanter rejected that notion, asserting that those decisions came down to the 'judgment, experience and operational needs' of individual agents. Kanellis, the other DOJ lawyer, compared the plaintiffs' case to the fictional Don Quixote's fight with windmills. In the story, Quixote sees windmills and believes they are giants. He's flung off his horse while riding to 'fight' them and does not believe his squire who notes they are windmills, not giants, insisting they were changed. 'Plaintiffs in this case imagine lawful standards amount to some grand government conspiracy,' Kanellis said, adding the challengers have been 'knocked off their horse.' But Young said another historical reference better befits the case. He described King Henry II of England asking his court to rid him of a 'troublesome priest.' Two knights went out to 'hack down' the bishop. The president, Young said, has likewise raised various concerns about campus protests. 'He doesn't have errant knights, but he's got Stephen Miller,' the judge said, referencing the top White House adviser. Young said he will issue a written ruling deciding the case but gave no indication of when it can be expected.
Al Jazeera
6 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Canary Mission: How has it been used to target pro-Palestine activists?
Canary Mission, an anonymous pro-Israel group and website, has been blacklisting pro-Palestinian students, professors and activists for more than 10 years. Now, the Trump administration has revealed that it has been using the list to target academics for deportation. What is the impact? In this episode: Darryl Li (@dcli) – Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences, University of Chicago Episode credits: This episode was produced by Diana Ferrero, Noor Wazwaz, Tracie Hunte and Chloe K. Li with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Kisaa Zehra, Marya Khan, Melanie Marich and our guest host, Manuel Rápalo. It was edited by Sarí el-Khalili and Kylene Kiang. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Joe Plourde mixed this episode. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take's executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio. Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on Instagram, X, Facebook, Threads and YouTube
The Verge
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Verge
Right-wing orgs put pro-Palestinian students on an ICE ‘hit list'
For nearly two years, students at Columbia University have warned that they're being targeted — and put in serious danger — by right-wing Zionist organizations like Canary Mission and Betar US. Canary Mission's goal was initially to 'expose' students it deemed antisemitic, ideally in the hopes that they'd be denied jobs and other opportunities. In the aftermath of October 7th, students who were targeted by Canary Mission and similar groups said they experienced a surge of online harassment that increasingly spilled over into real life. The stakes were raised further upon Donald Trump's reelection. Under Trump's brutal immigration enforcement regime, these doxing databases have turned into tools of the state, making protesters visible and vulnerable to immigration enforcement. A senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official has appeared to confirm that the students were right. Peter Hatch, the assistant director of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division, testified in court last Wednesday and Thursday that the Trump administration is using lists compiled by private groups to go after activists. In March, he said, his unit was told to urgently review a list of over 5,000 people to evaluate for deportation. The workload required moving analysts who typically work on counterterrorism and cybercrime to a 'tiger team' dedicated solely to pro-Palestine protesters. At least 75 percent of the names had been provided by Canary Mission, Hatch said. (Canary Mission did not immediately reply to The Verge's request for comment.) If it seemed like too much attention was paid to the protests at one specific Ivy League campus last year, the tensions at Columbia turned out to be a bellwether of what would soon happen across the country. The program Hatch described appears to be an unprecedentedly sweeping and high-stakes example of a growing pipeline between private harassment and government action. For years, Republicans have drawn political fodder from online outrage. Congressional Republicans released tech executives' internal communications to support their claim that social media platforms censored conservative voices online. Chaya Raichik, the woman behind Libs of TikTok, graduated from siccing her X, TikTok, and Instagram followers on LGBTQ students and teachers to advising Oklahoma's Department of Education. Before his public falling out with Trump, Elon Musk directed harassment campaigns against federal employees whose jobs he believed should be cut by the Department of Government Efficiency. ICE's reliance on information gleaned from — and at times manipulated or misrepresented by — far-right Zionist groups is an escalation that Columbia students have been warning about for years. 'There's been absolutely no recourse this entire time,' said Maryam Alwan, a Palestinian student who graduated from Columbia this year and was involved in campus activism before and after Israel's invasion of Gaza. In her time at Columbia, Alwan was subject to harassment from a coterie of individuals and organizations, including Canary Mission, an anonymous X page called Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus, and former Columbia professor Shai Davidai. 'It really causes this sense of fear, especially among Palestinian students. They tend to go after Palestinian students the most.' Upon Trump's reelection, some of these groups began identifying noncitizen activists who could be targeted for deportation. In his two-day testimony, Hatch said that senior officials with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the federal agency that houses ICE, urged him to expedite the tiger team's research into and reports on student activists. The first step was combing through the names on the list, which included both citizens and noncitizens, to determine who was deportable. HSI ultimately submitted between 100 and 200 reports to the State Department. The anonymously run Canary Mission website has been active for nearly a decade, but its efforts intensified after Hamas' October 7th attack on Israel and the long, brutal invasion of the Gaza strip that followed. Its website claims to document and denounce people who 'promote hatred of the US, Israel, and Jews' and includes thousands of names and allegations of antisemitism. They range from chanting 'from the river to the sea' and writing op-eds to 'providing material support for terror groups,' though Alwan said she and several of her friends have been baselessly accused of the latter. Canary Mission deliberately conflates any pro-Palestinian stances with antisemitism. Overall, the list amounts to a smear campaign against pro-Palestinian activists, including those involved in Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaigns. Canary Mission's database, alongside similar lists from other groups, provides an easy pool of harassment targets. In the fall of 2023, a box truck covered in LED screens started driving around Columbia's campus in Morningside Heights. The truck, which had been paid for by the conservative nonprofit Accuracy in Media, showed the names and photos of dozens of students it deemed 'Columbia's Leading Antisemites,' gathered from a list of students who were current or former members of organizations that signed onto a statement expressing solidarity with Palestinians. 'We were very adamant in trying to make the administration aware of our safety concerns, but we realized they weren't going to do anything. They just stonewalled,' Alwan said. Columbia announced it was putting together a 'doxing resource group' that November, but Alwan said it amounted to letting students input their information into a scrubbing site. 'They did not ever take any action against the students or the faculty that were constantly doxxing us,' she added. When Trump returned to office, he threw the power of the state behind these efforts. In March, ICE agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian Columbia graduate student who had negotiated with the university on students' behalf. Khalil has a green card and no criminal background. To justify his arrest, ICE and the State Department claimed that Khalil's mere presence in the United States is harmful to the US's foreign policy interests. Just one day before ICE showed up at his door, Khalil emailed Columbia's interim president, saying he had been the victim of a 'vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign' led by a Columbia professor. Khalil's arrest was a harbinger of more to come — and the other students and activists ICE arrested were also targeted by Canary Mission and other groups. Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested for writing an op-ed asking the university to 'acknowledge the Palestinian genocide' and divest its endowment from companies with ties to Israel, which the Department of Homeland Security claimed was proof that she had 'engaged in activities in support of Hamas.' Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, was arrested outside his home in Virginia. Columbia graduate student Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested during a naturalization interview with US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Other students were also targeted. DHS posted a video of Ranjani Srinivasan, a Columbia doctoral candidate who was in the country on an F-1 student visa, 'self-deporting' after she learned that ICE agents had been looking for her. Öztürk's dossier, unveiled in court proceedings, included her op-ed in the student newspaper and her Canary Mission page. Khalil's dossier included news clips about his involvement in Columbia's protests, as well as his Canary Mission page. The Trump administration has in fact warned of the risks of doxxing — of its own armed, masked, and unidentified ICE agents. The agents who detained Öztürk were masked; the agents who arrested Khalil did not initially identify themselves by name. In other words, the government is relying on dox lists to arrest noncitizens for exercising free speech while also claiming that ICE agents should remain unidentified for their safety. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) sued the Trump administration over its arrests of student activists, claiming it's chilled political speech and violated the First Amendment with an'ideological deportation policy.' Whatever the outcome, though, the campaign of fear has already been effective. J., a Columbia graduate student who asked to be referred to by their first initial because they fear retribution against noncitizen family members, told The Verge they were initially hesitant to get involved in campus protests because other students had been doxed. 'I kind of stayed away because of how militarized and surveilled our campus was,' J. said, ultimately changing their mind in the spring of 2025 after ICE arrested Khalil and other noncitizen students. 'I was like, 'Screw it. This is something bigger than me,'' said J., who is a US citizen. J. was one of the students who occupied Columbia's library in May — and was doxxed shortly afterward. Canary Mission posted the students' names and photos. The conservative Washington Free Beacon wrote a story on the nonbinary 'they-tifada' that stormed the library. By that point, J. said, a lot of students who were in the country on visas or green cards had 'started to minimize the space they take up in the advocacy world for fear of repercussions,' including the threat of deportation. 'The federal government is obviously taking an approach that is quite effective in scaring people into submission.' George Wang, a staff attorney at Columbia's Knight First Amendment Institute — which filed the suit against the Trump administration alongside the AAUP and Columbia's Middle East Studies Association — said the recent wave of arrests amounts to a major escalation against student protesters. 'For a long time — and especially the last year and a half — there have been plenty of reasons why people who have engaged in pro-Palestinian speech and advocacy may have felt chilled, particularly on college campuses,' Wang said. But doxxing trucks and disciplinary action are 'an entirely different category of harm than the potential of being arrested, detained, moved to detention in Louisiana, and possibly deported for engaging in that speech. The threat of deportation weighs so much more heavily on people than any threat of doxxing ever could.' Alwan said the same groups who have called for the deportation of student activists are now engaging in lawfare against US citizens. She is one of four defendants in a lawsuit claiming that campus activists had foreknowledge of the October 7th attack and were 'aiding and abetting Hamas' continuing acts of international activism.' 'This lawsuit is based off of the same doxxing and harassment that was created over a year ago,' Alwan said. 'Canary Mission is basically functioning as a hit list. We don't know who's funding it, there's no accountability, and a lot of what's on there is just completely made up in the first place.'
Gizmodo
7 days ago
- Gizmodo
Elmo Breaks Silence on His Antisemitic Social Media Posts
Over the weekend, some sort of cybercrime cretin hacked into the X account belonging to Elmo, the friendly puppet from Sesame Street, and used it to spout a bilge of anti-semitic and racist material. 'Kill all Jews,' read one post. Another mentioned Jeffrey Epstein, with the added scrawl: 'ALL JEWS SHOULD DIE.' Yet another post used the N-word. The posts remained online until Tuesday, when they were taken down. Elmo followed up the vitriolic posts with a return to his usual brand of warmhearted affection: 'Elmo loves you,' the puppet posted. However, the lack of an immediate apology from the puppet's account left some web users angry. Many X users insisted that the account should address the incident, and seemed to treat Elmo as if he were a real person instead of a fictional TV character. Many of the accounts that expressed anger at Elmo mentioned Israel or included emojis of Israeli flags. 'Still not a single word of apology from @elmo or team,' wrote one account on Monday, whose bio included an Israeli flag. 'No apologies for your poor behavior? Teaching everyone Jew hate is normal?' another account, whose profile reads 'Antizionism is a hate movement,' posted. Meanwhile, the account for Canary Mission, a controversial pro-Israel group, wrote: 'Elmo's account tweeted: 'Kill all Jews.' Sesame Street blamed a 'hack.' No proof. No apology. No accountability. Christina Vittas — the person behind Elmo — still has her job. We demand a real investigation. Or fire the person responsible.' Another group, the Combat Antisemitism Movement, wrote: 'Even though the tweets were deleted, they were seen by thousands. No apology. No explanation yet. We call on the Sesame Street team to urgently investigate this breach, review account security and staff access, and issue a public apology. This wasn't a joke. It was a call for murder.' Yet another account, whose bio includes the Israeli flag, wrote: 'I investigated the source of the @elmo incident — since Sesame Street has not apologized. I found it. This is why you shouldn't allow your kids to listen to Ms. Rachel.' The account then shared images of Rachel Griffin-Accurso, a children's entertainer who has appeared alongside Elmo in several episodes of Sesame Street. Griffin-Accurso has been targeted by Jewish advocacy groups over her rhetoric in support of Gazan children. In April, the advocacy group StopAntisemitism labeled Griffin-Accurso its 'Antisemite of the Week,' apparently for having the temerity to repeatedly suggest that children shouldn't starve to death or have their limbs blown off. On Tuesday, Elmo's account finally issued an apology: 'On Sunday, Elmo's X account was briefly hacked by an outside party, in spite of the security measures in place,' a statement shared online reads. 'We strongly condemn the abhorrent antisemitic and racist content, and the account has since been secured. These posts in no way reflect the values of Sesame Workshop or Sesame Street, and no one at the organization was involved.' To some web users, however, the apology was still not enough. Several accounts bemoaned that it had taken the account too long to say anything about the incident. 'This took TWO full days to write?' one account asked. While a certain amount of outrage is clearly understandable, the notion that Elmo, himself, or the people who ran his account were responsible for some sort of hateful screed on X, seems dubious at best. That said, it's unclear why it took the account a while to issue a statement. Gizmodo reached out to the Sesame Workshop for more information. To be sure, there were also quite a few web users who responded to the whole debacle with bemusement and humor instead of outrage. Many joked that Kanye West, who recently released a single called 'Heil Hitler' and has referred to himself as a 'Nazi,' had hijacked Elmo's account. X (or Twitter, as it was previously known) has never been a platform that is particularly well known for account security. Prior to Elon Musk's acquisition of the platform, high-level accounts were hacked quite often—including those belonging to Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian, and Joe Biden. After Musk's acquisition in 2022, the site has remained a place where account hijackings are common.
India Today
7 days ago
- Politics
- India Today
When Superman takes a side: Gaza, censorship, and the criminalisation of empathy in America
Since October 2023, the war in Gaza has become more than just a geopolitical crisis—it has triggered a deep reckoning within American democracy. What began as solidarity protests on college campuses has now escalated into a full-scale crackdown on dissent. In today's United States, sympathy for Gaza is increasingly framed not as compassion, but as extremism. University protests have seen over 2,000 arrests. International students are facing visa threats. Faculty have been warned to stay silent or risk careers. Under Trump's second term, the Department of Homeland Security has authorised counterterrorism tools to monitor student-led activism, while platforms like Canary Mission flag pro-Palestinian supporters for Digital censorship is rampant. Over 5,100 incidents of Palestinian content being removed or buried have been recorded across social media. "Misinformation" is cited—yet it's often grief, not hate, being filtered came the cultural earthquake: Superman. In the 2025 reboot, the Man of Steel defends a besieged nation called Jarhanpur—viewers instantly saw the metaphor. Jarhanpur is Gaza. Boravia, its wealthy aggressor, is Israel. Superman sides with the underdog. And suddenly, fiction was no longer backlash was swift. Right-wing pundits called it anti-Israel propaganda. Israeli supporters denounced it as dangerous messaging. Director James Gunn stayed silent. But the outrage revealed a bigger truth: even superhero narratives are now battlegrounds in the war over film, the global stage reflects the same silencing. In July 2025, three UN jurists investigating Israeli actions in Gaza resigned under pressure—following U.S. sanctions against another UN official who supported the ICC's war crimes inquiry. When accountability is punished, who is left to speak the truth?Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called for the war to end, saying it should've concluded a year ago. His voice, once powerful, is now barely this is the heart of it. The Gaza war is no longer just a foreign policy issue—it's a test of values in Western democracies. Whether grief is allowed. Whether speech can survive surveillance. Whether the act of caring for a distant child under drones can be permitted in a world of filtered feeds and politicised Superman is controversial, when student protests are treated as terrorism, and when silence is safer than truth—what remains of the free world?- Ends
