Mahmoud Khalil,
…30-something, the Damascus-born Palestinian (with dual Algerian citizenship through his mother, whose family were revolutionaries back home) got a Masters in Paleo Protest from Columbia, applying his training as Apartheid Divest’s frontman supporting Hamas since 10/8/2023, which overlapped his work as a UNWRA political affairs officer. Since his arrest by ICE he’s been represented by 19 attorneys, including the ACLU and CUNY law prof Ramzi Kassem, himself once a Paleo student activist at Columbia. As a Beirut undergrad Mr. Khalil worked as a popular, MI-6 vetted local staffer for the British embassy leading soft power projects, on one of which he worked with his future wife — hijabi Leb-American dentist Noor Abdalla, suggesting either Muslim Brotherhood or Hezbollah connections. No doubt it was for her sake he went to Columbia instead of Oxford. One of these days we’ll finally get to deport him
the Columbia University pro-Paleostinian protest leader, filed a lawsuit Tuesday alleging that US President Donald Trump...His ancestors didn't own any slaves...
’s 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 Paleostine," Khalil, who became the face of Trump’s crackdown on anti-Israel and allegedly antisemitic pro-Paleostinian activism when he was arrested by immigration officers in March 2025, said at a presser 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 making scrutiny itself impossible. They brand criticism of a government as hatred of a people. They rebrand documented atrocities as debates."
Khalil was arrested by federal immigration authorities in June 2025, with the Trump administration saying he was a threat to US interests and had committed fraud on his green card application. He was held in detention for several months until his court-ordered release, and has been battling deportation in court since.
The lawsuit, which was filed in Manhattan federal court, alleges that the government’s actions violate the Ku Klux Klan Act, an 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-Paleostinian activists. The lawsuit names US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration...
, White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, former DHS secretary Kristi Noem and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
"After the October 7 [2023] attacks and the beginning of the Israeli genocide, these entities were appalled and scared about the burgeoning Paleostine rights movement occurring on campus and the cratering support for [the] Israeli government’s genocide in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
," Baher Azmy, the legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the complaint on behalf of Khalil, claimed during the presser.
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, a turban pro-Israel group, 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, Moslem and Jewish New Yorkers."
Azmy claimed that Project Esther, a 2024 plan for combatting 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-Paleostinian activists for the Trump administration to target.
"It’s not like the State Department was using any reasoned judgment or deliberation," Azmy charged. "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."
Khalil was an organizer with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), an alliance of campus groups that led the disruptive protests on the Ivy League campus after the start of the Gaza war. The group is no longer recognized by the university.
CUAD has praised
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...onslaught, in which gunnies killed some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages. The group hosted pro-Hamas figures on campus, called for the "total eradication of Western civilization," and distributed Hamas propaganda at a campus library.
Khalil served as a spokesperson for the group in its negotiations with the Columbia administration.
Since his release from detention, Khalil has justified the Hamas attack on Israel and dismissed concerns about antisemitism at Columbia.
In September, he called for the "collapse" of the "Zionist genocidal project and the ideology of supremacy that it’s built on."
Related:
Mahmoud Khalil 07/04/2026 Gossip: Darializa Avila Chevalier Dating Mamdani Lawyer Who Repped Al Qaeda Terrorists, Including 'Close Associate' of Bin Laden
Mahmoud Khalil 06/14/2026 Final convoy of displaced families from Afrin return home: Rojava official
Mahmoud Khalil 06/05/2026 US senator demands release of US citizen seized by IDF in West Bank on Tuesday
Mahmoud Khalil 07/04/2026 Gossip: Darializa Avila Chevalier Dating Mamdani Lawyer Who Repped Al Qaeda Terrorists, Including 'Close Associate' of Bin Laden
Mahmoud Khalil 06/14/2026 Final convoy of displaced families from Afrin return home: Rojava official
Mahmoud Khalil 06/05/2026 US senator demands release of US citizen seized by IDF in West Bank on Tuesday