Mahmoud Khalil sues over alleged campaign against pro-Palestinian activists

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil has filed a civil rights lawsuit accusing federal officials and several private organizations of working together to punish pro-Palestinian student activists. The complaint matters because Khalil’s lawyers say the alleged coordination may violate a Reconstruction-era law written to curb government collaboration with vigilante groups.

The suit, filed Tuesday in federal court and led by the Center for Constitutional Rights, names the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission and Betar among the private groups involved in the alleged effort. It seeks unspecified damages and a court order barring what the complaint describes as an ongoing campaign against critics of Israel.

According to the lawsuit, the Heritage Foundation helped design the effort through “Project Esther,” a plan that called for removing noncitizens who took part in protests against Israel. The complaint says the document also portrayed protesters, without evidence, as part of a global network supporting Hamas.

The lawsuit says Canary Mission and Betar helped the alleged campaign by publishing or compiling information about Israel’s critics, including claims linking some activists to Hamas. Khalil’s lawyers argue that people identified by those groups were then targeted by federal authorities for immigration enforcement.

The complaint invokes the Ku Klux Klan Act, a law passed after the Civil War to address violence and intimidation carried out with official tolerance or assistance. Khalil’s lawyers argue that the alleged alliance between government officials and private groups fits the kind of conduct the statute was meant to prevent.

Requests for comment sent Tuesday to the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission and Betar were not immediately answered. Robert Greenway, a former Trump adviser and one of the authors of the Heritage report cited in the lawsuit, also did not respond to a request for comment.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson did not address the lawsuit’s allegations. In an email, she said the executive branch “has the lawful authority to take actions that will protect the public and to ensure the integrity of our immigration system.”

Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student, became a prominent public figure among campus protesters opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested him in March 2025 at his campus apartment, after which he became one of the best-known targets of the Trump administration’s actions against pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

He spent 104 days in immigration detention in Louisiana before a federal judge in New Jersey ordered his release, according to the account cited in the lawsuit. During that time, he missed the birth of his first child.

The complaint says Canary Mission and Betar later claimed credit for calling attention to Khalil’s noncitizen status. Betar also said it had used facial recognition technology to identify masked protesters and had provided a larger list of names to the Trump administration, according to the lawsuit and prior reporting cited in the case.

Betar has since agreed to dissolve its nonprofit status after New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the group, accusing its members of harassing Palestinians. The lawsuit against Khalil’s alleged targets comes as his separate deportation case appears likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

At a Tuesday news conference, Khalil said the new case was meant to expose organizations and institutions that he says worked to criminalize support for Palestinians. He warned that if constitutional protections are set aside under political pressure, “they can be cast aside tomorrow against anyone.”

Khalil has denied that his criticism of Israel is antisemitic. Government officials, Canary Mission and Betar have linked him to Hamas, but the complaint says they have not produced evidence for that claim.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.