Critics are raising grave civil liberties concerns after the Washington Postreported Tuesday that the Trump administration is seeking to collect the names and nationalities of “students who might have harassed Jewish students or faculty” as part of a U.S. Department of Education probe into alleged antisemitism on multiple college campuses.

In January, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order with the purported aim of rooting out antisemitism at higher education institutions, and has vowed to target foreign-born students who have engaged in demonstrations against Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, but which the president describes as “pro-jihadist” protests.

In January, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order with the purported aim of rooting out antisemitism at higher education institutions, and has vowed to target foreign-born students who have engaged in “pro-jihadist” protests.

His administration has already moved to deport multiple students involved in pro-Palestine organizing, including former Columbia University graduate student and green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil. A South Korean-born junior at Columbia University sued the Trump and other high-level Trump administration officials after immigration agents tried to arrest and deport her, according to a complaint filed on Monday.

According toThe Post, attorneys with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights were instructed to collect students’ names and nationalities in addition to information that is routinely gathered during a civil rights investigation, citing documents and three attorneys with direct knowledge of the situation who were quoted anonymously.

“My first thought was, ‘This is a witch hunt,'” one attorney told the paper.

The schools under probe are Columbia University; Northwestern University; Portland State University; The University of California, Berkeley; and The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, according to a statement from the Department of Education released on February 3.

Last week, Columbia agreed to a number of demands from the Trump administration as part of negotiations over $400 million in federal grants and contracts that the Trump administration had pulled due to the school’s alleged “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”

When investigating whether a school erred when handling complaints of discrimination and harassment, the Office for Civil Rights isn’t responsible for disciplining students who may have been behind harassment, so it does not usually collect student names or nationalities, per the Post.

Attorneys who spoke to the outlet said they “immediately wondered whether the list was meant as a tip sheet that the administration might use to target or deport foreign students who participated in protests.”

“The request asked for a list of all students that the university notified of potential violations of the code of conduct or who were referred for suspension, suspended, expelled and/or referred to law enforcement for harassment of, or violence toward, students and faculty ‘on the basis of their Jewish ancestry,'” according to the paper.

The request also asked for the students’ “national origin/ethnicity/shared ancestry,” per the Post. According to the outlet, it is not clear whether the five universities haver provided the students’ names or information on their ethnicities.

“There is no doubt that it can be used improperly,” a separate attorney told the Post.

In addition to the five schools named above, the Department of Education in early March sent letters to 60 universities “warning them of potential enforcement actions” if they do not take adequate steps to protect Jewish students.

Critics have argued that efforts to weaponize accusations of antisemitism against pro-Palestinian voices is part of a familiar playbook that aims to distract from serious war crimes and human rights abuses being carried out by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people.

Lawyer and historian Fernando Oliver characterized the effort by Trump’s Education Department as a continuation of the president’s “campaign to end free speech,” adding: “This is what dictators do.”