Mahmoud Khalil sues Trump administration, Zionist groups under anti-KKK law

MANHATTAN (CN) — Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is suing the Trump administration and several right-wing groups under an anti-KKK law, claiming that he and others were victims of an unlawful conspiracy to intimidate, jail and attempt to deport those who criticize Israel.

In a 131-page lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Southern District of New York, Khalil takes aim at government officials — including White House Deputy Chief Stephen Miller and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — whom he claims collaborated with conservative and Zionist groups like the Heritage Foundation, Betar and the Canary Mission to target pro-Palestinian activists.

Doing so, Khalil claims, violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. The enforcement law, first used to target the white supremacist vigilantism of the KKK, allows for federal punishment of private acts meant to deprive people of their constitutional rights.

“Collectively, the conspirators’ actions, motivated by their shared unlawful purpose and animus, sought to terrorize and make an example of Mr. Khalil and other noncitizen Palestinians or supporters of Palestinians in order to intimidate and silence the growing movement for Palestinian rights and political freedom, in a manner the KKK Act was designed to proscribe when enacted during Reconstruction,” Khalil claims in the lengthy complaint.

Last year, it was revealed in a separate trial that the Canary Mission, a controversial and anonymously run website known for doxxing critics of Israel, handed Homeland Security officials a list of thousands of noncitizens who have attended pro-Palestine protests. Government officials investigated those names and made several arrests in an attempt to deport them.

Khalil, a 31-year-old legal permanent resident who is married to a U.S. citizen, was the first of several people to get swept up by immigration agents in this initiative. He subsequently spent more than 100 days in federal detention, missing the birth of his first child, before he was ordered released by a federal judge.

“This lawsuit is about accountability and justice,” Khalil said at a press conference Tuesday announcing the lawsuit. “No matter where I am, I will not stop fighting until everyone who willingly contributed to my missing the birth of my son and to taking 104 days of my life from me answers for what they’ve done.”

According to Khalil, the Canary Mission list was just one small aspect of the unlawful “public-private partnership.” He said the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, outlined its plan to identify and target pro-Palestinian noncitizens for deportation with an addendum to Project 2025 called Project Esther.

“As agreed under this plan, the Betar Defendants and Canary Mission Defendants, who have for years both been steeped in anti-Palestinian animus and vitriol, selected the targets of the conspiracy — certain Palestinians and their supporters, including Mr. Khalil — for federal officials to punish, after doxxing and publicly smearing them as antisemitic and supportive of terrorism,” Khalil claims in the suit.

The groups then “boasted of their role in Mr. Khalil’s arrest and detention to maximize the speech-chilling goals of the conspiracy,” he adds.

Betar, deemed an extremist group by the Anti Defamation League, has since been shuttered by the New York Attorney General and did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Neither did the Canary Mission or the Heritage Foundation.

Khalil claims the entire conspiracy was made possible by the Trump administration’s willingness to enforce it. Rubio, for example, spearheaded Khalil’s deportation efforts by designating him as a national security threat.

Those efforts remain ongoing to this day.

“We’re still fighting in federal courts and immigration courts to prevent his deportation,” Baher Azmy, one of Khalil’s lawyers with the Center for Constitutional Rights, told Courthouse News on Tuesday.

Khalil is seeking damages and a court order finding the government’s conduct in his case — and those like it — unlawful. He announced the lawsuit just steps from the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan where it was filed, flanked by fellow activists like Sex and the City actress Cynthia Nixon, who spoke on Khalil’s behalf.

“If people can be singled out because they advocate for Palestinian human rights, then the message is not only meant for Mahmoud,” Nixon said at the press conference. “It is meant for every student, every immigrant, every organizer, every person who wonders whether speaking their conscience will come at a dangerous cost and unjust consequences.”

A former Columbia University graduate student who rose to prominence as an organizer of campus protests, Khalil became the poster child for the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech as the first of several college students to be detained for their activism.

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