What’s Happening?

AAUP v. Rubio, a case challenging the administration’s revocation of visas and detentions of noncitizen students and scholars, is a glaring red flag. It’s laying bare how the U.S. government works hand-in-hand with extremist networks to surveil, intimidate, and even deport students and faculty for expressing their political beliefs. At its core, this case exposes the dangerous intersection of U.S. policy and foreign influence being weaponized to target vulnerable communities—particularly immigrants and students of color—right here on American soil.

The plaintiffs in this case include international students who lost visas, faculty whose contracts weren’t renewed, and scholars who faced direct retaliation for their speech. Their legal claims rest on core constitutional rights: free speech, equal protection, and due process. But the deeper, more insidious issue is ideological profiling—being punished not for what you’ve done, but for what you believe. 

This is far from new. The U.S. has a long history of using deportation as a political weapon. Marcus Garvey, a leading Black activist during the Harlem Renaissance, was deported to Jamaica in 1927. In the 1930s, over a million Mexicans were deported or forced out, many of them U.S. citizens. The common thread? Targeting movements that threaten the status quo, especially when they come from immigrants or people of color.

But what’s happening now is more coordinated. Since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, the U.S. government pressed its thumb on the scale, first, by pushing universities to suppress student speech. The pressure from lawmakers, donors, and coordinated media narratives forced universities to abandon their commitments to free speech when it came to Palestine. Student groups advocating for an end to U.S. institutional and government enablement of the genocide and for Palestinian freedom have been banned, expelled, placed on academic probation, and had their diplomas revoked. Students have been doxxed and harassed. Visa revocation threats have become a go-to method of silencing international students. And state governments are either codifying or enforcing previous legislation that institutionalizes this repression. For example, Florida’s HB 741 (2019) defines criticism of Israel as antisemitic and treats it as hate speech, even in academic settings.

Then came direct collaboration with far-right blacklists. In sworn testimony in AAUP v. Rubio, an ICE agent admitted that immigration officers reviewed Canary Mission pages while evaluating student visa status and acknowledged that the agency was aware of the site’s political motivations. This is not passive surveillance; it’s an active network, a deliberate pipeline from anonymous political profiling to real-life deportation decisions. It reflects a deepening policy of academic suppression and direct infringement on free speech.

At the July 9, 2025, court hearing, ICE agent Peter Hatch testified that the agency formed a specialized group, the “tiger team,” to work on removing pro-Palestine college students from the country. Initially, Hatch explained that the team examined nearly 5,000 profiles compiled by Canary Mission, a site dedicated to naming and targeting critics of Israel.

When asked directly if someone had provided the list from Canary Mission, Hatch responded: “Yes.” 

“You mean someone said, ‘Here is a list that the Canary Mission has put together?’” Judge William Young asked Hatch, according to court transcripts. Hatch answered with a simple “yes”.

Hatch was then asked about other sources the government is using. He replied that there was one other website he could not recall. The court asked Hatch if it might be Betar, a far-right, Islamophobic group with links to the violent Kahanist movement in Israel. According to transcripts, Hatch replied, “That sounds right.”

What are these groups, and what do they do?

Groups like Canary Mission and Betar operate as modern-day McCarthyists. They create blacklists of pro-Palestinian students and faculty, archive social media posts, and push universities and immigration officials to act against them. Canary Mission is especially dangerous because it operates anonymously, publishes personal information (like class schedules and workplace details), and has no checks or oversight. Betar, with its roots in militant Zionism, shows up to intimidate and surveil campus events. In many ways, these groups outsource repression, doing what government actors can’t do openly.

These groups don’t operate in a vacuum. They’re backed by a web of anonymous, tax-exempt funding. Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) enable individuals to channel money through organizations like the Central Fund of Israel and others to fund surveillance and intimidation campaigns without any accountability. As The Forward and Jewish Currents have reported, some early funding came from the Helen Diller Family Foundation, via the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco. The money was passed through the Central Fund of Israel to a shadowy Israeli nonprofit called Megamot Shalom. But more recent donations remain intentionally structured to remain hidden and avoid public scrutiny. 

According to tax filings cited by Jewish Currents reporter Alex Kane, the Ann and Robert Fromer Charitable Foundation donated $20,000 to Canary Mission in 2023. One of the family foundation’s directors is corporate lawyer Robert Fromer, who is also a board member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP)—one of the most prominent pro-Israel think tanks in the country, whose employees have significantly influenced Middle East policy under numerous presidential administrations. The Fromers’ Canary Mission donation was routed through the Central Fund of Israel, a nonprofit that enables tax-exempt contributions to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. 

Even seasoned experts have been unable to trace the full scope of Canary Mission’s current donors. This anonymity means we do not know who is dictating policy through these channels or how much sway these anonymous donors now hold over U.S. immigration enforcement.

What’s Next and How This Impacts Us

If AAUP v. Rubio fails, the consequences will reach far beyond one group of students. It will set a dangerous precedent where private political agendas—often aligned with far-right interests—can dictate who gets to stay in this country and who is allowed to speak freely. We’ve already seen this reality take shape beginning in February, even before this case reached the courts. It poses a direct threat to our constitutional rights, including free speech, dissent, academic freedom, and the very idea that campuses should be spaces for open debate. Most critically, it endangers all immigrant communities by reinforcing a system where political belief becomes grounds for punishment.

Civil rights organizations, immigration defense networks, and First Amendment lawyers must continue mounting challenges to these unconstitutional practices. Universities must sever all ties with blacklists and clarify their commitments to ensuring student safety and freedom of speech. Lawmakers should investigate how ICE collaborates with politically motivated actors and pass legislation to prohibit anonymous blacklists from influencing federal enforcement.

This starts at Palestine advocacy, but it won’t end there. The systematic assault on the Palestinian solidarity movement targets the very rights and tools that Americans of all stripes have used for generations to defend and secure our freedom and democracy. It’s no coincidence that the right to boycott – one of the Civil Rights Movement’s most critical tools – has been another top target of those behind Canary Mission and Betar. In the same way that stripping Americans of the right to boycott Israel strips them of the secure right to boycott for civil rights, stripping us of the right to protest Israel’s genocide freely strips us all of the right to protest anything our government deems off-limits. This is about whether we’re okay with outside influence and shadow networks deciding what we can and can’t say and protest for or against in America. It’s about defending the fundamental right to dissent without fear, surveillance, or retaliation. 

You can keep up to date on the case as it progresses here.