Even before immigration authorities began rounding up international students who had spoken out about Israel’s war on Gaza earlier this spring, there was a sense of fear among campus activists. Two graduate students at Cornell University — Momodou Taal and Amandla Thomas-Johnson — were so worried they would be targeted that they fled their dorms to lay low in a house outside Ithaca, New York.

As they feared, Homeland Security Investigations, the intelligence division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was intent to track them both down. As agents scrambled to find Taal and Thomas-Johnston, HSI sent subpoenas to Google and Meta for sensitive data information about their Gmail, Facebook, and Instagram accounts.

In Thomas-Johnston’s case, The Intercept found, Google handed over

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