For more than three months, Mahmoud Khalil sat in an immigration detention facility — not because he broke a law, but because he protested. Now he's fighting back.

Khalil, a Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate student, was arrested in March 2025 and held for 104 days. His federal lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration entered into a conspiracy with private political organizations — including the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission, and Betar — to target him and other Palestinian activists for deportation as punishment for their speech. The lawsuit invokes the Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law designed to prevent exactly this kind of coordination between the government and outside political groups.

The documented evidence is alarming. A senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official testified in court that the Department of Homeland Security built an investigative team from a list of 5,000 names compiled by Canary Mission, a private website that tracks people who express pro-Palestinian views. The Heritage Foundation's own "Project Esther" — a political blueprint created before the Trump administration took office — laid out a plan to label student protesters as terrorism supporters and push for their deportation.

"I will not stop fighting until everyone who willingly contributed to taking 104 days of my life from me answers for what they've done," Khalil said at his press conference announcing the suit.

This lawsuit could force the White House, the Heritage Foundation, and their allies to answer publicly — in court — for what they did.

Sign the petition to stand behind Mahmoud Khalil and demand full accountability.