White House says DHS is using intelligence to identify student protesters following Mahmoud Khalil's arrest

The Trump administration said it is using intelligence collected by the 
Department of Homeland Security to identify international students who 
participated in protests against the Israel-Hamas war across dozens of 
college campuses last year, days after a Palestinian activist was detained 
by federal agents over protests at Columbia University.

“They have been using intelligence to identify individuals on our nation’s 
colleges and universities who have engaged in such behavior and activity 
and especially illegal activity,” White House Press Secretary Karoline 
Leavitt told reporters during a news briefing Tuesday.

Leavitt did not provide more information about the intelligence she said 
DHS was using for the targeted arrests.

According to Leavitt, DHS has also shared a list of student names with 
Columbia University and accused the school of not cooperating with White 
House efforts to identify them.

“Columbia University has been given the names of other individuals who 
have engaged in pro-Hamas activity, and they are refusing to help DHS 
identify those individuals on campus,” Leavitt said. “As the president 
said very strongly in his statement yesterday, he is not going to tolerate 
that and we expect all of America’s colleges and universities to comply 
with this administration’s policy.”

Columbia University did not immediately return a request for comment.

Leavitt accused Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian student activist 
arrested by federal agents officers last week, of organizing “group 
protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed 
Jewish-American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college 
campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda, flyers with the logo of 
Hamas.”

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