On September 30 the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a “finding of facts and ruling of law” in American Association of University Professors v. Trump, exposing how senior U.S. officials used private, politically charged sources to identify non-citizens for deportation based on their pro-Palestinian speech. It concludes that the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights were violated by the defendants Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary Marco Rubio (along with their subordinates) but does not include any order or remedy. It defers consideration of remedies to a future “remedy phase” of the proceedings, noting that a “hearing on remedy will promptly be scheduled.”
Judge William Young’s 161-page opinion documented that beginning in March 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) directed Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) analysts to mine data from Canary Mission.
The court described Canary Mission as a private, anonymous database of more than 5,000 names that the government “viewed as a primary source to investigate non-citizen student protesters.” Canary Mission’s website says it “documents people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews. We investigate hatred across the North American political spectrum, including the far-right, far-left and anti-Israel activists.”
To manage the workload, HSI created a “Tiger Team”—an expedited task force drawn from counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and cyber-intelligence divisions—to process the thousands of names supplied by Canary Mission and similar private lists. The analysts were told to look for signs of “support for terrorist organizations,” though no clear standards were given. Within days, the team began issuing internal Reports of Analysis, recommending that individuals named on the website be referred for visa revocation or deportation under “foreign policy” provisions of immigration law.
Young found that these names were passed up the chain of command to the State Department, where they were used to justify the removal or visa cancellation of students and lawful residents such as Yunseo Chung and Mahmoud Khalil, both accused of participating in “antisemitic protests” based largely on Canary Mission material. “Once one was on the lists,” Young wrote, “one was potentially subject to adverse action so long as there was any online mention of one’s pro-Palestine activities.”
The court concluded that this policy was designed “deliberately and with purposeful aforethought” to chill constitutionally protected speech. Judge Young’s opinion closed with a categorical reaffirmation of free-speech equality: “No law means no law. The First Amendment does not draw the President’s invidious distinction. Non-citizens lawfully here enjoy the same freedom of speech as the rest of us.”