Mahmoud Khalil sues Trump officials and private groups over alleged deportation conspiracy – JURIST
Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian rights lawyer, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court alleging a coordinated conspiracy between senior administration officials and three private organizations to target and deport him for his own protection. Khalil is a former graduate student at Columbia University who became the public face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism.
of Complaint of 131 pagesfiled under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, names among the many defendants senior presidential adviser Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and State Department official John Armitill Foundation, and two State Foundation groups, Sure Can Mission. Betar, and individual leaders of each organization among others.
According to complaintThe Heritage Foundation launched Project Esther in October 2024. This project was a plan to identify and target non-citizen students and scholars who advocate for Palestinian rights for arrest and deportation through a “public-private partnership” with a “willing administration” in the White House. Canary Mission and Betar would select the targets. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official later testified in separate federal proceedings that roughly 75 percent of the names his agency investigated came from Mission Canary.
Khalil, a lawful permanent resident married to a US citizen, was arrested by ICE agents on March 8, 2025. He spent 104 days in immigration detention in Louisiana, missing the birth of his first child. His lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages, as well as an injunction barring the defendants from continuing to pursue his removal.
“This case is about so much more than what was done to me,” Khalil said in one press release on Tuesday. “This is a coordinated and ongoing campaign to punish, silence and intimidate anyone who dares to speak for the liberation of Palestine.”
