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MANHATTAN (CN) — After 104 days in federal immigration custody, a stint that forced him to miss the birth of his first child, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is seeking $20 million from the Trump administration for his “politically motivated arrest,” according to his legal team.
On Thursday, Khalil filed an administrative claim against the State Department, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security, arguing that he was subjected to false arrest, malicious prosecution and more than three months of false imprisonment following his March 8 detention in New York City.
“This is the first step towards accountability,” Khalil said in a statement Thursday. “Nothing can restore the 104 days stolen from me. The trauma, the separation from my wife, the birth of my first child that I was forced to miss. But let’s be clear, the same government that targeted me for speaking out is using taxpayer dollars to fund Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
The Trump administration is trying to deport Khalil through a rarely used provision of immigration law that allows for a noncitizen to be deported if their presence in the U.S. compromises foreign policy.
As a leader of campus protests for Palestinian rights at Columbia University last spring, the government claims Khalil poses such a threat and arrested him at his Manhattan apartment for deportation. He was the first of several international students to be arrested by federal immigration officials for speaking out about Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza.
Khalil, who was born in Syria but is a lawful permanent U.S. resident with a green card, spent a bulk of his time in custody at an immigration detention facility in Louisiana more than 1,000 miles away from his home and family.
“President [Donald] Trump, Secretary [Marco] Rubio, and DHS officials, all boastfully proclaimed their intentional targeting of Mr. Khalil for deportation, describing Mr. Khalil’s arrest as the first step in a broader campaign to deport campus protesters,” Khalil argued in the claim.
The filing is the first step in an incoming lawsuit from Khalil against the Trump administration. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil rights legal group representing Khalil, the complaint will be filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, a 1946 statute that allows individuals to sue the government for damages for civil law violations.
Khalil is seeking $20 million in damages, which according to his legal team, he would use to help other pro-Palestine students being targeted by the Trump administration.
“He would accept, in lieu of payment, an official apology and abandonment of the administration’s unconstitutional policy,” the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a press release.
A federal judge ordered Khalil’s release from custody in June, finding that his detention was “highly unusual” and threatened to chill the First Amendment rights of other protesters.
Now back home in New York, Khalil claims that he continues to suffer reputational damage after Trump administration officials smeared him as a terrorist sympathizer on social media.
One post from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Khalil of “advocating for violence” and described his potential removal as “welcome news.” And Khalil claims the White House posted several mugshot-style photos of him and accused him of being pro-Hamas and someone who “hates the United States.”
“The actions of United States officials to publicly vilify and humiliate Mr. Khalil, falsely label him as a terrorist sympathizer and antisemite, has caused Mr. Khalil extreme emotional distress and irreparably spoiled his reputation, career, and safety,” he claimed in the Thursday filing.
In a statement to Courthouse News, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin doubled down on some of those same claims, baselessly accusing Khalil of placing Jewish Columbia students at risk with his advocacy for Palestine.
“The Trump administration acted well within its statutory and constitutional authority to detain Khalil, as it does with any alien who advocates for violence, glorifies and supports terrorists, harasses Jews, and damages property,” she said.
McLaughlin called the accusations in Khalil’s Thursday claim “absurd.”
Khalil is still fighting the government’s efforts to deport him, granted from home rather than a Louisiana jail cell. In addition to the Trump administration’s argument that Khalil compromises foreign policy, it claims that he lied on his permanent residency application by failing to disclose that he interned for UNRWA, a United Nations relief agency that supports Palestinian refugees.
On Wednesday, Khalil moved to block his deportation on that claim, arguing that the government only accused him of lying on his green card form to bolster its bid to keep him behind bars.
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