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BOSTON — Three Department of Homeland Security officials testified Tuesday that their department had noticeably shifted its focus from enforcing criminal laws to addressing immigration cases in the months since President Donald Trump’s election.

The three agents with the DHS’ Homeland Security Investigations branch were involved with the high-profile arrests of several noncitizen student protesters — including Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk — that feature in a lawsuit by organizations including Harvard faculty against the Trump administration.

The faculty claim in their lawsuit that five noncitizen student protesters, including Ozturk and Khalil, were targeted for arrest because of their pro-Palestine speech as a result of what they call the government’s “ideological deportation policy.”

The HSI agents said Tuesday that they received memoranda from the State Department instructing them to arrest Khalil, Ozturk, and Columbia graduate student Mohsen Madawi because their visas had been revoked. The memos cited a federal statute that allows the government to terminate visas of noncitizens it deems “adverse to U.S. foreign policy.”

All three agents, some of whom had served for decades, said they had never personally seen the statute invoked before to call for an arrest by HSI.

The new memos reflect a heightened focus on immigration across the board for HSI, the agents said. HSI has the statutory authority to conduct arrests in both criminal and civil cases, but the agents said the group has historically focused on addressing criminal conduct, like the illicit sale of narcotics.

“In the past 6 months, we’ve been prioritizing Title VIII more than we have been since I’ve been here,” said Patrick Cunningham, an agent in HSI’s Boston office who has worked with the agency since 2006. Title VIII of the U.S. Code contains federal immigration and nationality laws.

“We’ve always had the authority, but the prioritization of that work has certainly increased,” he added.

Two officials said immigration-related arrests are typically carried out by Enforcement and Removal Operations, a separate branch of the DHS. Both said they were so unfamiliar with immigration arrests that they consulted ERO agents before arresting the student protestors to ensure their directives were “legally sound.”

The agents’ testimony provides more insight into the arrests even as lawyers for the federal government have repeatedly pushed to keep related documents — including interagency correspondences, directives, and arrest reports — under wraps.

The federal government submitted most of the documents to William G. Young ’62, the federal judge overseeing the case, in camera, meaning only he could see the unredacted copies. But Young has moved to waive the legal privileges the government has invoked to keep the submissions under seal.

Lawyers for the government have argued that revealing the documents, which they said contain sensitive information, could compromise government processes. They filed a petition with the First Circuit Court of Appeals mid-trial on Thursday to block Young from unsealing them. The court initially sided with the government, temporarily staying the production of further documents.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs — including the American Association of University Professors, the organization’s Harvard, New York University, and Rutgers University chapters, and the Middle East Studies Association — argued that the appeal “rests on a mistaken account of the proceedings” and asked the First Circuit to dismiss it.

On Monday, Young requested the First Circuit lift the stay and allow him to “muddle through to the end of the evidentiary process.” The higher court has yet to rule.

Government lawyers asserted law enforcement privilege, which protects information pertinent to ongoing investigations, to withhold Khalil’s arrest report from the AAUP’s lawyers on Monday. But Young overruled their invocation of privilege and forced them to turn over the documents, noting that Khalil was arrested over three months ago.

“If the privilege were that broad, no police report could ever be produced if the government decided not to produce it,” Young said. “I really scrupulously want to honor the stay of the Court of Appeals, but this does not seem to fall within that order, and it may be given to the plaintiffs.”

The disputes over evidence have continued to disrupt the case as the trial nears its end on Friday. Young acknowledged the delays in court Tuesday, saying that the trial might have to be extended to next Monday to allow both parties enough time to deliver their final oral arguments.

The court is taking a recess for Wednesday but will resume on Thursday.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Laurel M. Shugart can be reached at laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com. Follow them on X @laurelmshugart.