Defending Rights & Dissent Sues State Dept, FBI, DOJ, & ICE For Records on Surveillance of Palestine Solidarity Activism

Civil liberties defense group Defending Rights & Dissent has filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to compel the State Department, the FBI, the DOJ, and ICE to release critical files that will shed light on the U.S. government’s surveillance and monitoring of Palestine solidarity activism across the country.

Defending Rights & Dissent’s FOIA request seeks all communications between the agencies and a number of private vigilante groups, including the ADL, Betar, and Canary Mission, who spy on pro-Palestine protesters and compile blacklists for the government to then target for selective immigration enforcement. The requests also asks for files concerning the enforcement and interpretation of an Cold War immigration law and Trump Executive Orders that have formed the basis for a nationwide policy of spying on, detaining, and seeking to deport supporters of Palestinian rights. These records would uncover the inner workings of the Trump administration effort to arrest and detain protesters like Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, and Badar Khan Suri.

“First the Biden administration and now Trump have waged an all-out war on the First Amendment in order to insulate Israel from criticism for committing genocide in Gaza. The Trump administration has taken us back to a situation reminiscent of the McCarthy era. These FOIA requests seek to illuminate how core federal agencies are interpreting Trump’s directives, as well as to expose the role of private blacklisters in both whipping up the repression and selecting targets for persecution,” said Chip Gibbons, Policy Director of Defending Rights & Dissent.

The government agencies have failed to produce relevant documents, forcing a lawsuit.

Defending Rights & Dissent, represented in this case by the Law Office of Amber Qureshi, is a national civil liberties organization that defends the American people’s right to know and freedom to act through grassroots mobilization, public education, policy expertise, and advocacy journalism.

Read and download the full complaint here.