Khalil sues Trump allies over alleged campaign to silence pro-Palestinian activism

Mahmoud Khalil sued senior Trump administration officials and three private organizations on July 14, 2026, accusing them of a coordinated campaign to suppress pro-Palestinian activism through doxing, detention and attempted deportation. His lawyers are using the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 to argue that the case reaches beyond one activist and into an alleged conspiracy linking the White House to outside advocacy networks.

The lawsuit says the defendants worked together to target Khalil and other supporters of the Gaza solidarity movement. That legal theory puts a heavy burden on Khalil: he will need to persuade a judge that the named officials and groups did not merely criticize his politics, but coordinated action against him. In civil-rights terms, that means the documentary trail, including communications, planning and any evidence of shared purpose, will matter as much as the public rhetoric surrounding the case.

Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student and lawful permanent U.S. resident, became one of the most visible faces of the campus protests over the war in Gaza. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested him on March 8, 2025, taking him from his student apartment building to 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan and then to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He remained in immigration custody for 104 days before his release on June 20, 2025.

His legal fights did not end there. Khalil had already challenged the Trump administration’s use of an obscure immigration-law provision that allows deportation when the secretary of state decides a noncitizen’s presence harms U.S. foreign-policy interests. In September 2025, a Louisiana immigration judge ordered him deported to Syria or Algeria on the theory that he failed to disclose information on his green-card application. Khalil appealed that order to the Board of Immigration Appeals on March 3, 2026, arguing that the immigration judge made factual and legal errors.

The new suit names Betar, Canary Mission and the Heritage Foundation, along with senior Trump administration figures including Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, Markwayne Mullin, Todd Blanche, Kristi Noem and John Armstrong. Khalil’s lawyers say the case is meant to show a conspiracy stretching from the White House to private activist and advocacy groups.

The administration has portrayed Khalil as a security threat tied to Hamas, a claim his legal team rejects. Khalil has said his activism was driven by opposition to U.S. funding of weapons manufacturers and by support for Palestinian rights, and the case now tests how far the government can go when political speech collides with immigration power and coordinated public pressure.