Top Trump aide caught using shadowy site to launch 'McCarthy-like' effort

President Donald Trump's top aide was caught using a shadowy website to track pro-Palestinian academics for deportation, Politico reported on Wednesday.

According to court documents Politico retrieved, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller admitted to using a website called Canary Mission to find information about the academics that could be used to revoke their visas. Details about how Miller used the information remain under seal after the White House asserted executive privilege, Politico reported.

Critics have accused Canary Mission of using "McCarthy-like tactics" to target pro-Palestinian academics because it uses thin and sometimes scant evidence to paint them as anti-semitic, according to Politico.

The revelations came from deposition transcripts from a case filed by five foreign-born academics against State Department Secretary Marco Rubio after he declared their presence in the United States illegal.

"Immigration lawyers and pro-Palestinian activists have previously suspected that immigration authorities were plucking the names of academics from the Canary Mission site and seeking to revoke their visas with little independent research," the Politico report reads. "But the depositions reveal for the first time how broadly Trump officials relied on the website."

In the depositions, an investigator for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the agency uses Canary Mission in its work.

"We received information on the same protesters from multiple sources, but Canary Mission was the most inclusive. The lists came in from all different directions," a DHS investigator named Peter Hatch told lawyers.

Silencing pro-Palestinian voices has become a staple in the second Trump administration. In January, Trump signed an executive order targeting university students who participated in pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel rallies on campus. It also calls on federal agencies to come up with additional actions to "curb or combat anti-Semitism."