Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University anti-Israel protest leader, filed a lawsuit Tuesday alleging that the Trump administration had colluded with several pro-Israel groups to prosecute him for his advocacy.
The lawsuit is “about exposing the network of organizations, political actors, and institutions that work together to criminalize solidarity with Palestine," Khalil, who became the face of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on anti-Israel activism when he was arrested by immigration officers in March 2025, said at a press conference at New York City Hall.
“For decades, the state of Israel and the Zionist organizations in this country that operate on behalf of Israel have understood that their conduct cannot survive honest scrutiny," he said. “So rather than defend or change their conduct, they resorted to make scrutiny itself impossible. They brand criticism of a government as hatred of a people. They rebrand documented atrocities as debates."
Khalil spent 104 days in a Louisiana immigration jail following his arrest before being released in June 2025. His fight against the federal government’s deportation case remains ongoing. He was awarded a stay in his federal case in May, blocking the Trump administration from deporting him until his case proceeds to the Supreme Court.
The lawsuit, which was filed in Manhattan federal court, alleges that the government’s actions violate the Ku Klux Klan Act, a 1871 anti-conspiracy law intended to restrict government coordination with vigilante groups. The act was also used to prosecute the 2017 Charlottesville march’s organizers for planning to incite racist violence.
The complaint alleges there had been a “conspiracy" among private pro-Israel entities, including the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission, and Betar USA, and senior Trump administration officials to target and prosecute pro-Palestinian activists. The lawsuit names Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
“After the Oct. 7 attacks and the beginning of the Israeli genocide, these entities were appalled and scared about the burgeoning Palestine rights movement occurring on campus and the cratering support for Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza," Baher Azmy, the legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the complaint on behalf of Khalil, said during the press conference.
He continued: “Because they could not defend their support for the Israeli government’s actions…they sought to do what cowards and bullies do, which is to repress, to punish speech that they disliked."
Inquiries from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission, and Betar USA were not immediately returned.
The lawsuit comes after Betar USA agreed to halt its operations in New York after reaching a settlement with state Attorney General Letitia James, whose office found that the group had committed a “campaign of violence, harassment, and intimidation against Arab, Muslim, and Jewish New Yorkers."
Azmy claimed that Project Esther, a 2024 plan for combating antisemitism written by the conservative Heritage Foundation that outlined many policies undertaken by the Trump administration last year, had created a “blueprint for the conspiracy."
He alleged that Betar and Canary Mission then worked to identify and “nominate" campus pro-Palestinian activists for the Trump administration to target.
“It’s not like the State Department was using any reasoned judgment or deliberation," Azmy said. “They were taking these nominations and, within a day or two, sending DHS and ICE officials to arrest Mahmoud and others and send them to faraway prisons, and so today we’re here demanding accountability."