ALBAWABA - Mahmoud Khalil, a well-known Palestinian-American organizer and head of student protests, has sued the Trump administration for $20 million, saying that it detained him illegally for over 100 days because he supports Palestinian rights.
The case was sent to the U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security on Thursday. Khalil's lawyers say that he was detained for political reasons because he took part in pro-Palestinian protests at American colleges.
Khalil was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in March, even though he can legally live in the U.S. His lawyers say that the government wanted to remove him because they thought that his activity hurt ties between the U.S. and Israel.
Khalil said in a statement, "Nothing can bring back the 104 days that were taken from me—the trauma, the time away from my wife, and the birth of my first child." This was an act of political revenge and an abuse of power. He also said that he would take either money or a written explanation from the U.S. government, along with a promise to support free speech in politics.
Officials from the government supported the arrest by calling Khalil's claims "strange" and saying that what they did was legal.
Civil rights groups were very angry about Khalil's arrest because they saw it as part of a larger war on student activity that was against Israel. Later, a U.S. district judge in New Jersey said that Khalil's arrest broke his constitutional right to free speech and freed him in June.
The case shows how the political fight over free speech and college protests is getting worse. Khalil was arrested after former President Donald Trump said that anti-Israel protests were the same as racism and promised to remove foreign students who took part.
Analysts say Khalil's case is a good example of how the Trump administration is going after top universities in general. Many of these colleges have had pro-Palestine protests because of the war in Gaza. The government had already said that schools like Columbia and Harvard would lose money if they didn't protect Jewish students.
