lawsuit<\/a>, filed in federal court Tuesday, alleges a coordinated campaign among senior officials of President Trump\u2019s administration, leaders of the Heritage Foundation and two online surveillance groups, Canary Mission and Betar.<\/p>\nAccording to Khalil\u2019s lawyers, that \u201cpublic-private partnership\u201d \u2014 first brought to light in a separate trial last year \u2014 may violate the Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law that sought to restrict government coordination with vigilante groups. <\/p>\n
Inquiries to the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission and Betar were not immediately returned on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
A former graduate student at Columbia University, Khalil, 31, gained prominence as a spokesperson and leader for student activists protesting against Israel and its actions in Gaza. <\/p>\n
Khalil, a legal permanent resident who is married to a U.S. citizen, was arrested in March 2025 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in his campus apartment. He quickly became the face of the Trump administration crackdown on pro-Palestinian demonstrators.<\/p>\n
He then spent 104 days in a Louisiana immigration jail, missing the birth of his first child, before a federal judge in New Jersey ordered his release. <\/p>\n
Khalil\u2019s deportation case, a priority for the Trump administration, has moved with unusual speed through executive-branch-controlled immigration courts, and may soon wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. <\/p>\n
He has forcefully denied that his role in pro-Palestinian protests amounts to antisemitism.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy beliefs are not wanting my tax money or tuition going toward investments in weapons manufacturers for a genocide,\u201d he previously told The Associated Press. \u201cIt\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Mahmoud Khalil is suing the federal government and several private groups, alleging they were part of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[60450,60449,10539,60452,31548,37,879,41521,1874,722,60454,44678,60451,1187,60453],"class_list":["post-206647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-betar","tag-canary-mission","tag-conspiracy","tag-critic","tag-heritage-foundation","tag-israel","tag-leader","tag-mahmoud-khalil","tag-new-jersey","tag-president-trump","tag-student-activist","tag-suit","tag-trump-administration-crackdown","tag-u-s-citizen","tag-vigilante-group"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116919765977826664","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}