Mahmoud Khalil alleges conspiracy in lawsuit against Trump officials

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The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday with the United States federal district court in Manhattan, seeks damages from defendants including the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, pro-Israel groups Betar and Canary Mission, and several senior officials of the Trump administration. The lawsuit said the Heritage Foundation created a “blueprint”, dubbed Project Esther, to dismantle the pro-Palestine movement growing in the US by targeting prominent non-citizens and conflating pro-Palestine advocacy with anti-Jewish sentiment. The organisation then relied on groups like Betar, a far-right Zionist youth movement, and Canary Mission, which has long anonymously surveilled pro-Palestine advocates, to identify who to target, Khalil’s legal team charged The lawsuit further pointed to White House adviser Stephen Miller’s work with the Heritage Foundation before Trump took office for his second term in January 2025. Among the defendants, it listed Miller, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former and current secretaries of homeland security, Kristi Noem and Markwayne Mullin, and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. The legal action also seeks to bar any aspects of the alleged conspiracy from being used to justify the ongoing deportation proceedings against Khalil. “This case is about far more than what was done to me,” Khalil said at a news conference outside of the federal court on Tuesday. “It’s about exposing the network of organisations, political actors, and institutions that work together to criminalise solidarity with Palestine and to make an example of those who refuse to stay silent,” he said. A US green card holder who was a vocal student activist for Palestinian rights at Columbia University, Khalil was arrested on March 8, 2025, by federal agents and detained for 104 days at an immigration detention centre in Louisiana. He has since fought his deportation in separate proceedings in federal court and in immigration court. A federal judge in New Jersey ordered his release in June 2025, but the Trump administration launched a successful appeal that rejected the federal court’s jurisdiction over the case. A federal judge has since issued a stay in the case, which is expected to eventually reach the Supreme Court, barring the Trump administration from detaining or deporting Khalil as the legal proceedings move forward. Khalil’s legal team has also fought back against efforts to deport him through the immigration court system, which falls under the executive branch. They have published evidence suggesting the proceedings were atypically fast-tracked and have asked an immigration appeals court to revisit the case. “We’re still fighting in federal courts and immigration courts about his deportation,” said Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of Khalil’s lawyers. For its part, the White House again pointed to its claim Khalil had misrepresented himself during his immigration application. Trump administration officials have said he failed to disclose prior work with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). Khalil’s legal team has rejected the claim, while UNRWA has said he was never on the organisation’s payroll and was only affiliated briefly as an intern. “Those who lie to the government to obtain entry into the United States will face justice,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement responding to the new lawsuit. Speaking at Tuesday’s news conference, Khalil’s lawyer Azmy decried a “private-public partnership to single out non-citizen students who would be vulnerable to immigration laws”. He further cited the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which makes it a federal crime to deny an individual “any of the rights, privileges, or immunities, or protection, named in the Constitution”. The law was passed in response to actions by the Ku Klux Klan to persecute formerly enslaved Black men and women. “This case is about the entire United States government coalescing and unlawfully using the repressive power of the state to target and put someone in prison,” Azmy said. 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