Mahmoud Khalil Sues Trump Officials Over Alleged Anti-Palestinian Plot

Represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Beldock Levine & Hoffman, Khalil is invoking the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871—a statute originally designed to prevent vigilante groups from colluding with government officials to strip citizens of their rights. The lawsuit names key figures, including advisor Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, alongside private entities such as the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission, and Betar.

The Anatomy of the Alleged Conspiracy

The complaint traces the roots of the operation to October 2023, when Miller publicly vowed to target Palestinian supporters. This rhetoric eventually manifested in the Heritage Foundation’s "Project Esther," an initiative that sought to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism and target foreign protesters for deportation. According to the legal filing, the administration utilized the expertise of surveillance groups like Canary Mission to pre-select students and scholars for arrest. Between March and May 2025, officials allegedly leveraged ICE to execute these detentions.

For Khalil, the personal toll has been profound. During his 104-day incarceration, he was held in Jena, Louisiana, nearly 1,300 miles from his home, forcing him to miss the birth of his first child. Legal director Baher Azmy described the campaign as a "brazen" effort to use state repression as a tool of terror against the student movement. As his attorneys prepare to take his deportation case to the Supreme Court, Khalil maintains that this litigation serves a broader purpose: exposing the mechanics of a public-private partnership designed to dismantle dissent.