• by Wendy Davis , March 9, 2026

The Trump administration is wrongly targeting noncitizens, including lawful permanent residents like the head of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, over their reports about content on social platforms, a research organization claims in a new lawsuit.

The administration "is engaged in a brazen and far-reaching campaign of censorship while cynically and falsely claiming that censorship is what it is fighting," the nonprofit Coalition for Independent Technology Research alleges in a complaint filed on its behalf by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and Protect Democracy.

The coalition -- which represents research institutions, academics, journalists, and advocates who study issues including content policies -- claims that the administration has "adopted a new policy of excluding and deporting noncitizens whose work involves combatting misinformation and disinformation, fact-checking, content moderation, trust and safety, or compliance.

This policy "is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment," the coalition argues.

"Defendants explicitly seek to sanction and silence ... those whose research, advocacy, content moderation, or other work supports greater moderation of content on the platforms," the group writes, adding that officials have "singled out for punishment researchers and advocates who have criticized the more permissive content moderation policies of one platform in particular -- X."

The complaint comes nearly three months after the State Department said it was sanctioning people it described as "agents of the global censorship-industrial complex," including Imran Ahmed -- a green card holder and founder and CEO of the research group Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Soon after the State Department issued that statement, Ahmed sued to prevent the government from moving forward with sanctions, arguing that an arrest or deportation would violate his First Amendment rights. On Christmas Day, a federal judge in New York issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting federal authorities from detaining Ahmed or removing him from New York.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate has published critical reports about offensive speech posted by users on X -- including a 2024 report that the company failed to remove racist, homophobic and antisemitic comments posted by Twitter Blue subscribers. That report cited several examples, such as the posts “Diversity is a codeword for White Genocide,” and “Trannies are pedophiles.”

The complaint filed Monday by researchers alleges that the Trump administration is conflating the speech of "private actors" -- such as groups that report on misinformation -- with censorship.

"When independent researchers and advocates study the internet platforms or express their views about the content moderation policies of those platforms, and when the platforms’ employees work to develop or enforce those policies, they are engaged in private expressive activity that the First Amendment protects," the research group argues.

"It is defendants’ campaign to suppress that expressive activity that violates the Constitution," the researchers add.

Among other requests, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research is seeking an injunction prohibiting the federal government from threatening coalition members with visa denials or revocations, or deportation, due to their speech regarding online content.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate is separately battling with X, which claims that the group wrongly scraped the platform to gather information for its report.

U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer dismissed X's suit in March 2024, writing, "This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech.

X is currently appealing that ruling.