Mahmoud Khalil is seeking $20 million in damages from Donald Trump’s administration after the Columbia University graduate was locked up in an immigration detention center for more than 100 days for his role in campus demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza.
A court filing on Thursday serves as a precursor to a federal lawsuit against the administration, which is accused of pursuing retaliatory arrests and threatening to remove student activists involved in pro-Palestinian demonstrations from the country.
Administration officials carried out a plan to target Khalil “in a manner calculated to terrorize him and his family,” according to the claim.
Khalil spent more than three months in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, where he missed the birth of his son and his graduation ceremony from Columbia.
His experience there caused him “severe emotional distress, economic hardship, damage to his reputation, and significant impairment of his First Amendment and Fifth Amendment rights,” according to the claim.
Khalil is seeking $20 million which he intends to use to support other targeted students.
But he would accept, in lieu of payment, an official apology and abandonment of the administration’s “unconstitutional” policy of arresting and deporting international students, according to his legal team.
“There must be accountability for political retaliation and abuse of power,” Khalil said in a statement. “And I won’t stop here. I will continue to pursue justice against everyone who contributed to my unlawful detention or spread lies in an attempt to destroy my reputation, including those affiliated with Columbia University. I’m holding the U.S. government accountable not just for myself, but for everyone they try to silence through fear, exile, or detention.”
The complaint is directed at the State Department, Homeland Security and ICE, which Khalil’s attorneys accuse of “malicious prosecution and abuse of process, false arrest, false imprisonment, and negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
Khalil was stripped of his green card and arrested in front of his then-pregnant wife in their New York City apartment building on March 8. Administration officials accused Khalil of “antisemitic activities” for his role in campus-wide demonstrations against Israel’s war, allegations Khalil and his legal team have resoundingly rejected.
Officials concede that Khalil did not commit any crime, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio has sought to justify Khalil’s arrest by invoking a rarely used law claiming that Khalil’s presence in the United States undermines foreign policy interests of preventing antisemitism.
Khalil and his attorneys have argued that the administration has broadly sought to conflate criticism of Israel’s war with antisemitism, dovetailing with the president’s threats to college campuses and his wider anti-immigration agenda.
A federal judge ordered his release from ICE detention on June 20 while legal challenges against his arrest and threat of removal from the country continue in both federal and immigration courts.
In renewed legal filings on Wednesday, Khalil’s attorneys argue that the administration’s secondary basis for his arrest and removal — allegations that he lied in immigration paperwork — are similarly retaliatory and violate his First Amendment and Fifth Amendment due process rights.
Those allegations, which were raised only after his arrest, are meritless, Khalil wrote in court documents.
“Being falsely accused of fraud by the same government that explicitly detained me for my protected speech, and continues to seek my removal for that same speech, has caused deep and lasting psychological harm. I live with constant anxiety about when or how the government might come after me, or others like me again,” he wrote.
“But this psychological toll is only compounded by the deep responsibility I feel, despite my justified fears of continued retaliation, to keep speaking out against injustice,” Khalil added.
