Mahmoud Khalil Sued Columbia on Monday, Saying the University's 'Deliberate Indifference' to Doxxing Led Straight to His 104 Days in an ICE Jail. He Wants His Campus Access Back.

Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate who became the face of the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism when immigration agents arrested him in the lobby of his university apartment building, sued Columbia in federal court in New York on Monday. The lawsuit accuses the university of showing "deliberate indifference" to a campaign of harassment and doxxing that, it argues, led directly to his March 8, 2025, detention.

Khalil filed alongside Mohammad Zubairi, the president of a pro-Palestinian campus group, and the group itself, which Columbia has suspended. The complaint says students repeatedly asked administrators for help in the days and weeks before Khalil's arrest, as their names, faces and personal details were circulated online by people demanding they be deported. "Defendants' deliberate indifference towards this harassment enabled the coordinated, persistent doxxing of multiple PWG members and directly led to Mr. Khalil's March 8, 2025, illegal detainment and attempted deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement," the lawsuit states.

The allegations go well beyond inaction. According to the complaint, Columbia hired private investigators to monitor Khalil, surveilled pro-Palestinian students, retaliated against those who reported harassment, treated Palestinian-themed events as security risks, revised its disciplinary policy to target criticism of the Israeli government, and refused to correct disinformation about Khalil while he sat in a Louisiana immigration jail. It also cites the university's decision to call in the New York Police Department to clear encampments and what it calls mass disciplinary proceedings that fell disproportionately on students of Arab or Muslim ancestry during a spring 2024 semester the suit describes as "rife with harassment."

"We are suing because no student, regardless of their background, should go through the hell that Columbia put us through over all these years," Khalil said in a statement. The plaintiffs are asking a judge to restore Khalil's access to campus, lift the suspension of the student group and award damages "to be determined at trial."

Khalil was a lawful permanent resident, a green card holder, and had not been accused of any crime when ICE agents took him into custody in March 2025. He spent 104 days in detention in Louisiana, missing the birth of his first child, before a federal judge in New Jersey ordered him released. The government's effort to deport him has not ended; Khalil is currently challenging a removal order issued by the Board of Immigration Appeals. In 2025 he separately sued to stop Columbia from turning over student disciplinary records to a congressional committee, and he has a pending damages claim against the federal government over his detention.

Columbia did not address the specific allegations. "Creating a campus environment where every member of our community feels welcome, supported and safe is fundamental to who we are as a university," the school said in a statement, adding that it remains committed to protecting its community and responding to concerns. The university has spent the past 18 months under intense federal pressure over its handling of protests, including the loss and partial restoration of hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding, and Monday's suit puts it in the unusual position of being accused simultaneously by Washington of doing too little against antisemitism and by its own former students of doing too much against them.