{"id":2583,"date":"2026-07-15T02:08:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T02:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firearmgiveawayfinder.com\/?p=2583"},"modified":"2026-07-15T02:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T02:08:11","slug":"mahmoud-khalil-is-suing-the-white-house-and-heritage-foundation-mother-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firearmgiveawayfinder.com\/?p=2583","title":{"rendered":"Mahmoud Khalil Is Suing the White House and Heritage Foundation \u2013 Mother Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<div class=\"hero is-image \">\n\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"media-caption\">Mahmoud Khalil at his July 14 press conference in New York announcing his Ku Klux Klan Act suit.<\/span><span class=\"media-credit\">Sophie Hurwitz<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"mj-text-cta\">Get your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/newsletters\/?mj_oac=Article_Top_No_Oligarchs\" data-ga-category=\"TopOfArticle\" data-ga-label=\"NewsletterPromoCovid\" data-ga-action=\"click|https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/newsletters\/?mj_oac=Article_Top_Support\">Sign up for the free <em>Mother Jones Daily<\/em>.<\/a><\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span class=\"section-lead\">Mahmoud Khalil, the <\/span>Palestinian activist who spent months in ICE detention, has filed a federal lawsuit against what he alleges is a \u201cpublic-private conspiracy\u201d to deport him, taking aim at both the Trump administration\u2014one of the suit\u2019s targets\u2014and a constellation of right-wing figures and organizations that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2025\/03\/mamhoud-khalil-detainment-disapperance-trump-white-house-involved-rubio-betar\/\">relentlessly targeted<\/a> him over his involvement in anti-Israel protests at Columbia University. Khalil contends that the White House collaborated with these groups in violation of  the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2022\/02\/ku-klux-klan-act-donald-trump\/\">Ku Klux Klan Act<\/a>, a Reconstruction-era law that sought to restrict government coordination with racist vigilantes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Khalil\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/ccrjustice.org\/sites\/default\/files\/attach\/2026\/07\/1_7-14-26_Complaint_w.pdf\">suit<\/a>, filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that federal officials entered into a conspiracy with ideologically driven groups\u00a0including the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission, and Betar, to \u201csingle out Mr. Khalil and other non-citizen Palestinians and their supporters for arrest, detention, and deportation, as punishment for their support of Palestinian rights.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"m-gadY8vVOM\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"They Came After Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil. Now He Wants Justice.\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/m-gadY8vVOM?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"media-caption\">\u201cI will not stop fighting until everyone who willingly contributed to taking 104 days of my life from me answers for what they\u2019ve done,\u201d Khalil said.<\/span><span class=\"media-credit\">Video by Peter Berger and Sophie Hurwitz<\/span><\/figcaption><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Aspects of that alleged relationship have been publicly documented. Shortly after federal immigration officials detained Khalil in March 2025, his lawyers told <em>Mother Jones<\/em> they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2025\/03\/mamhoud-khalil-detainment-disapperance-trump-white-house-involved-rubio-betar\/\">had reason to believe the White House was involved<\/a>. Months earlier, Ross Glick, who then led the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2025\/01\/muslim-travel-ban-trump-palestine-protest-free-speech-deportation\/\">radical right-wing Zionist group Betar USA<\/a>, claimed he had \u201cstarted commencing lists of Jew-hating foreign nationals on visas who support Hamas\u201d and sending those lists to Trump administration officials. In addition to\u00a0 Khalil, at least eight other noncitizen Palestinians or supporters of Palestinian rights were targeted for deportation based on their advocacy, according to the lawsuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Months after Khalil\u2019s arrest, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2026\/01\/ozturk-khalil-documents-deportation-pro-palestine-protest-canary-mission\/\">unsealed court records proved<\/a> that the federal government was targeting students for arrest and deportation based on pro-Palestinian speech\u2014and relying partly on information from groups like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2025\/07\/canary-mission-israel-palestine-blacklist-university-trump-deportation-ozturk-khalil\/\">Canary Mission<\/a>, a website cataloging and encouraging harassment of people who express pro-Palestinian views, in order to do so. In July 2025, a senior ICE official testified in court that the Department of Homeland Security <a href=\"https:\/\/knightcolumbia.org\/content\/dhs-tiger-team-scrutinizing-student-protesters-was-told-to-investigate-5000-names-listed-by-canary-mission-ice-official-testifies\">created a team<\/a> to investigate student protesters \u201cbased on a list of 5,000 people identified on the Canary Mission website,\u201d according to the Knight First Amendment Institute.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI think the evidence has, in a way, been there all along,\u201d Khalil\u2019s lawyer Astha Sharma Pakharel said at the press conference. \u201cThe Heritage Foundation admitted as early as October of 2024 that it intended to recruit a public-private partnership once a willing administration entered into the administration.\u201d The lawsuit alleges that the Heritage Foundation, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2025\/11\/heritage-foundation-tucker-carlson-nick-fuentes-backlash\/\">perhaps<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2025\/05\/the-christian-rights-plot-to-purge-pro-palestine-activism-from-the-united-states\/\">the single<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2026\/07\/pete-hegesth-israel-morgan-stanley-jonathan-burkan\/\">most influential<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2026\/02\/project-2025-donald-trump-dei-chirstian-nationalism\/\">outside organization<\/a> with respect to the second Trump administration, created a blueprint, known as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heritage.org\/progressivism\/report\/project-esther-national-strategy-combat-antisemitism\">Project Esther<\/a>, for linking individual student protesters to a supposed \u201cHamas Support Network\u201d and targeting them for deportation, and relied on groups like Canary Mission and Betar to identify targets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If his case moves forward, court proceedings may compel the Heritage Foundation and the Trump administration to make public more details of how specific students were pursued for deportation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To prove a conspiracy, though, Khalil\u2019s lawyers will need to offer evidence beyond anti-Palestinian ideological alignment. \u201cThe government\u2019s behavior in Khalil\u2019s case stinks to high heaven,\u201d Stephen I. Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/07\/14\/nyregion\/mahmoud-khalil-trump-conspiracy-lawsuit.html\">told the <em>New York Times<\/em><\/a>. \u201cWhether that opens the door to this kind of broad theory of civil liability is another question altogether. Courts will be worried about what kind of precedent it would set unless there are clear reasons Khalil\u2019s case is not just factually unique but legally unique.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Khalil\u2019s own deportation case is ongoing, and is expected to eventually reach the Supreme Court. But while that separate litigation proceeds, he is seeking damages from <a href=\"https:\/\/revealnews.org\/podcast\/trump-deportations-venezuela-el-salvador-students-gaza-mahmoud-khalil-rumeysa-ozturk\/\">the groups<\/a> he says contributed to his 104-day detention. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis case is about far more than what was done to me, Khalil said at Tuesday\u2019s press conference. \u201cIt\u2019s about a coordinated, ongoing campaign to punish, silence, and intimidate anyone who dares to speak out for Palestinian liberation, and it\u2019s about exposing the network of organizations, political actors, and institutions that work together to criminalize solidarity with Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2026\/07\/mahmoud-khalil-lawsuit-conspiracy-heritage-betar-trump-canary\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mahmoud Khalil at his July 14 press conference in New York announcing his Ku Klux Klan Act suit.Sophie Hurwitz Get your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist who spent months in ICE detention, has filed a federal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-usa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmgiveawayfinder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmgiveawayfinder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmgiveawayfinder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmgiveawayfinder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmgiveawayfinder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firearmgiveawayfinder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmgiveawayfinder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmgiveawayfinder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmgiveawayfinder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmgiveawayfinder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}