Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian rights activist, filed a lawsuit July 14 in US federal court in Manhattan alleging a "coordinated" conspiracy between senior Trump administration officials and three private organizations to target him for deportation over his advocacy work. Khalil is a former Columbia University graduate student who became the public face of the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism.

The 131-page complaint, filed under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, names among many defendants senior presidential advisor 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 State Department official John Armstrong, along with the Heritage Foundation and two online surveillance or "doxxing" groups, Canary Mission and Betar, as well as individual leaders of each organization.

According to the complaint, the Heritage Foundation launched Project Esther in October 2024. This project was a plan to identify and target non-citizen students and scholars who advocated 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 & Customs Enforcement (ICE) official testified in separate federal proceedings brought by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) that roughly 75% of the names of student activists his agency investigated came from Canary Mission.

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, and an injunction barring the defendants from continuing to pursue his removal.

"This case is about far more than what was done to me," Khalil said in a press release. "It's about a coordinated, ongoing campaign to punish, silence, and intimidate anyone who dares to speak out for Palestinian liberation."

From JURIST, July 15. Used with permission. Internal links added.

See our last reports on Mahmoud Khalil and the pro-Israel doxxing operation.