The Trump administration’s efforts to deport students and campus activists have been cloaked in secrecy, whether it’s the masked agents that snatched Rümeysa Öztürk off the streets, the arrest of Mohsen Mahdawi at what should have been his citizenship interview, or the government’s shifting legal arguments to detain them.

The troubling lack of transparency extended to court battles, too. In the cases of both Öztürk and Mahdawi, an obscure court rule required an in-person visit to a Vermont federal courthouse to review key materials, including the Trump administration’s briefs and exhibits defending their detention.

These cases are critical tests of free speech and the constitutional limits on targeting noncitizens over their dissent. So The Intercept fought to make the full dockets public. So far, we’ve been successful in eight federal courts, six districts, and two federal appellate circuits — and we’re doing the same in other cases across the country.

Here’s how we’re doing it.