Mahmoud Khalil, the activist who was arrested and detained by ICE on the orders of Stephen Miller and the Trump administration, and who is currently fighting in court against his rearrest and possible deportation, filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. government today, alleging that it conspired to deprive him of his constitutional rights to free speech.
Defendants include the conservative Heritage Foundation, the hard-right Zionist group Betar, and the doxxing organization Canary Mission, along with the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and other individual members of the Trump administration, including Miller. The suit focuses on how these groups worked together with the Trump administration to specifically target pro-Palestinian student organizers, ultimately leading to the arrest of Khalil at his Columbia student housing March of 2025.
"Today, I ask you not to see this as only my case. It belongs to every immigrant, every student threatened for organizing, every threatened academic pressured into silence, every journalist punished for their reporting, and every person told that advocating for Palestinian rights means forfeiting their own freedom or own future," Khalil said on Tuesday, addressing a rally outside of the District Courthouse in Lower Manhattan where he filed his lawsuit.