The Department of Homeland Security is firing back at anti-Israel activist, Mahmoud Khalil, after he filed a $20 million claim against the federal government for what he says was a coordinated effort to suppress his pro-Palestine advocacy.

The legal claim, which was filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act on Thursday, alleges that Mr. Khalil was falsely imprisoned, maliciously prosecuted, and branded as an antisemite during his arrest and detention earlier this year. 

“The abusive and unlawful conduct by U.S. officials, from unlawful arrest to unlawful prolonged detention, have caused and will continue to cause Mr. Khalil severe emotional distress, economic hardship, and damage to his reputation. Mr. Khalil seeks an award of damages to compensate for the harms he has suffered,” his lawyers wrote. 

The filing was rebuked by a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin, who called Mr. Khalil’s claims “absurd,” adding: “It was Khalil who terrorized Jewish students on campus,” and “he ‘branded’ himself as antisemite through his own hateful behavior.” 

Ms. McLaughlin went on to defend the federal government’s actions against the embattled anti-Israel activist, stating that the administration “acted well within its statutory and constitutional authority to detain Khalil, as it does with any alien who advocates for violence, glorifies and supports terrorists, harasses Jews, and damages property.” 

The filing comes just a month after a federal judge ordered Mr. Khalil to be released from an immigration detention center in Louisiana, allowing him to return to New York while his deportation case plays out in federal court. 

Mr. Khalil, who was born in Syria but holds citizenship in Algeria, was arrested by immigration officers in March after the Department of State revoked his visa and green card. The 30-year-old graduated in December with a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and served as one of the ringleaders of the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas student encampment movement that has roiled Columbia since October 7, 2023. 

The state department initially justified the administration’s deportation of Mr. Khalil by calling up a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows the government to deport non-citizens who pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” 

The government also argued that Mr. Khalil committed immigration fraud by lying about his employment history on his green card application, namely his involvement in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a UN group accused of aiding Hamas and employing people who participated in the October 7 massacre. 

The administration further accused Mr. Khalil of withholding his previous employment at the Syria office of the British Embassy at Beirut, as well as his work with an anti-Israel student group at Columbia, Columbia University Apartheid Divest.

In June, the New Jersey District Court judge overseeing the case ruled that the government could not continue to hold Mr. Khalil on the basis of the foreign policy law. At the time, however, he declined to grant Mr. Khalil’s release given the government’s secondary claim that Mr. Khalil failed to disclose key work history information in his green card application. 

The following week Judge Farbiarz determined that the green card allegations against Mr. Khalil did not warrant his continued detainment. The judge stated that the anti-Israel activist was not a flight risk or danger to the community and thus his continued detention was “highly unusual.”

Mr. Khalil’s case has become a focal point in the debate over the government’s crackdown on the anti-Israel activism that exploded on American college campuses in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack. Mr. Khalil has vowed to continue to “speak up for Palestine” even if the administration “would kill me.”