Mahmoud Khalil alleges conspiracy in lawsuit against Trump officials
Lawsuit claims conspiracy between top administrative officials and private groups to target the pro-Palestine advocate. Pro-Palestine advocate Mahmoud Khalil has filed a lawsuit against officials
Lawsuit claims conspiracy between top administrative officials and private groups to target the pro-Palestine advocate. Pro-Palestine advocate Mahmoud Khalil has filed a lawsuit against officials of the administration of United States President Donald Trump and three private groups, alleging a coordinated conspiracy to target and deport him. 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.
The BriefWire