Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist who spent months in ICE detention, has filed a federal lawsuit against what he alleges is a “public-private conspiracy” to deport him, taking aim at both the Trump administration—one of the suit’s targets—and a constellation of right-wing figures and organizations that relentlessly targeted 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 Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law that sought to restrict government coordination with racist vigilantes.

Khalil’s suit, 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 including the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission, and Betar, to “single out Mr. Khalil and other non-citizen Palestinians and their supporters for arrest, detention, and deportation, as punishment for their support of Palestinian rights.”

“I will not stop fighting until everyone who willingly contributed to taking 104 days of my life from me answers........

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