Pro-Palestinian advocate Mahmoud Khalil has filed a lawsuit against officials in President Donald Trump’s administration and three private organizations, alleging an organized conspiracy to target and oust the president.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, seeks damages from defendants, including the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, pro-Israel groups Betar and Canary Mission, and several senior Trump administration officials.
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According to the complaint, the Heritage Foundation created a “blueprint” called Project Esther to dismantle the growing pro-Palestinian movement in the United States by targeting prominent non-citizens and conflating pro-Palestinian advocacy with anti-Semitic sentiment.
The organization then turned to groups such as Betar, the far-right Zionist youth movement, and Canary Mission, which has long anonymously monitored pro-Palestinian advocates, to identify who to target, Khalil’s lawyers charged.
The lawsuit also notes that White House Counsel Stephen Miller worked with the Heritage Foundation before Trump was sworn in for a second term in January 2025.
Named among the defendants are Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former and current Homeland Security secretaries Kristi Noem and Markwayne Mullin, and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The lawsuit also seeks to prohibit any aspect of the alleged conspiracy from being used to justify ongoing deportation proceedings against Khalil.
“This case goes far beyond what was done to me,” Khalil said at a news conference outside the federal courthouse on Tuesday.
“This is to expose the network of organizations, political actors and institutions that work together to criminalize solidarity with Palestine and set an example for those who refuse to be silent,” he said.
Khalil, a U.S. green card holder and student activist for Palestinian rights at Columbia University, was arrested by federal agents on March 8, 2025, and held for 104 days in an immigration detention center in Louisiana.
Since then, he has fought his deportation in separate proceedings in federal court and immigration court.
A federal judge in New Jersey ordered his release in June 2025, but the Trump administration launched a successful appeal denying federal court jurisdiction over the case.
A federal judge has since issued an injunction blocking the case, which is expected to eventually reach the Supreme Court, barring the Trump administration from detaining or deporting Khalil as the case progresses.
Khalil’s lawyers are also fighting back against efforts to deport him through the executive branch’s immigration court system. They released evidence suggesting the process was unusually fast and asked the Court of Immigration Appeals to reconsider the case.
“We are still fighting his deportation in federal court and in immigration court,” said Baher Azmi, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of Mr. Khalil’s lawyers.
The White House reiterated its claim that Khalil made false statements on his immigration application. Trump administration officials said he had not disclosed his previous work with the United Nations Palestine Refugee Agency (UNRWA).
Mr Khalil’s lawyers rejected the claim, but UNRWA said he was never on the organization’s payroll and had only been with the organization briefly as an intern.
“Those who lied to the government to gain admission to the United States will be brought to justice,” White House Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said in a statement responding to the new lawsuit.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Khalil’s lawyer, Azmi, denounced the “public-private partnership to single out non-citizen students who are vulnerable to immigration law.”
He also cited the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which made it a federal crime to deny an individual “any of the rights, privileges, immunities, or protections enshrined in the Constitution.” This law was passed in response to the Ku Klux Klan’s persecution of formerly enslaved black men and women.
“This case is about the entire United States government colluding to illegally use the state’s repressive powers to target and imprison someone,” Azmi said.
