Pro-Palestinian protester and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil is suing multiple parties, including the Trump administration and the Heritage Foundation, for waging a “conspiracy” against him since last year.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident married to a U.S. citizen, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in March 2025 before a federal judge ordered his release. He has not been deported, though there is a chance he still could be removed from the country as the case remains ongoing despite his release from detention.
The activist is now taking legal action into his own hands, accusing the federal government and right-wing groups of conspiring together to target pro-Palestinian students such as himself.
The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday, takes aim at several members of the Trump administration, the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission, and Betar. The latter two groups dox individuals and organizations deemed antisemitic or anti-Israel. The administration then uses that information to find pro-Palestinian student protesters it wants to deport, according to the 131-page suit.
The defendants, per the court filing, are accused of “jointly carrying out a conspiracy to single out Mr. Khalil and other non-citizen Palestinians and their supporters for arrest, detention, and deportation, as punishment for their support of Palestinian rights.”
The sole plaintiff alleges the public and private parties violated the Ku Klux Klan Act, a federal law created in 1871 to combat the white supremacist group during the Reconstruction Era following the American Civil War. Khalil’s lawyers, citing the law, argue government officials are prohibited from collaborating with private individuals in ways that deprive citizens of their constitutional rights.
The attorneys behind the massive lawsuit compared the government’s weaponization of the legal system to “post-bellum Southern justice” during the Jim Crow era.
The suit pinned the Heritage Foundation as the mastermind behind the “Project Esther Blueprint,” which laid out the “conspiratorial plan” to “punish Palestinians and their supporters” for protesting Israel amid the war in Gaza.
“According to the Blueprint, the success of the conspiracy would depend on a ‘public-private partnership’ once a ‘willing Administration occupies the White House’ to leverage federal power to impose serious punishment on the Palestinians and their supporters whom the Private Defendants sought to target,” the civil rights lawsuit states.
The federal defendants are White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and top State Department consular official John Armstrong.
The plaintiff is asking the federal court in the Southern District of New York to grant an injunction prohibiting the defendants from continuing to rely on “unconstitutional and pretextual grounds for detention and removal.” An amount of compensatory and punitive damages will be determined at trial if the case moves forward.
Khalil is particularly taking aim at his upset about his 104-day incarceration, during which he missed the birth of his first child last spring.
MAHMOUD KHALIL LOSES APPEAL TO DISMISS DEPORTATION CASE
“I will not stop fighting until everyone who willingly contributed to my missing the birth of my son—and 104 days of my life—answers for it,” Khalil wrote on X, vowing to take more actions soon.
“But this lawsuit is about far more than what was done to me,” he said. “It is about a coordinated, ongoing plot to punish, silence, and intimidate everyone who dares to dissent and speak out for Palestinian liberation. We will hold them accountable.”