BOSTON—Below are highlights from today’s proceedings in the trial before Judge William G. Young in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in a case challenging the Trump administration’s policy of ideological deportation.

  • A senior Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official testified that the agency assembled a team in early 2025 to investigate student protestors. The team—referred to internally as the “Tiger Team”— rapidly compiled over 100 reports based on a list of 5,000 people identified on the Canary Mission website. 

  • The official, Peter Hatch, helps lead an office within ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division that compiles background reports on targets of the agency’s investigations. He was questioned by Alexandra Conlon of Sher Tremonte LLP. 

  • Tomorrow’s expected witnesses: Peter Hatch, a DHS official who is the Assistant Director of the Office of Intelligence in Homeland Security Investigations and Amy Greer, a lawyer for Mahmoud Khalil.

A transcript of today’s testimony will be available shortly here.

Trial began on Monday, July 7, 9:00 am ET and is expected to end on July 18, 1:00pm ET.

Read daily trial updates here.

Members of the press need to register daily to access the trial livestream here.

Read more about the case here.

Lawyers on the case include Ramya Krishnan, Jameel Jaffer, Alex Abdo, Scott Wilkens, Carrie DeCell, Xiangnong (George) Wang, Talya Nevins, Jackson Busch, and Stephany Kim for the Knight First Amendment Institute, Ahilan Arulanantham, Michael Tremonte, Noam Biale, Alexandra Conlon, and Courtney Gans for Sher Tremonte, and Edwina Clarke and David Zimmer for Zimmer, Citron & Clarke.

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, [email protected].