A green card holder the White House wants gone is now using a Reconstruction-era law to sue the very officials trying to deport him — and if a judge bites, it could expose how private groups coordinate with the executive branch while tying up immigration enforcement for months.
Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student who became the public face of last year's campus protest movement, filed suit in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday against senior Trump officials and several pro-Israel organizations, accusing them of conspiring to strip him of his constitutional rights. The lawsuit, brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, names White House adviser Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Heritage Foundation, and two online groups — Betar and Canary Mission — as defendants.
The legal weapon of choice is the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a statute enacted to crush racist vigilantism. Khalil's lawyers argue the same law now applies to what they call a
