Detained Protester Mahmoud Khalil Sues Columbia University

Mahmoud Khalil, the green card holding legal permanent resident arrested by ICE on Saturday, and a group of other students are suing Columbia University, the university’s trustees, and a number of other officials, according to newly filed court records.

The move is the latest episode in one of the most high profile immigration cases in the country, which could set a precedent for under what grounds the U.S. can deport legal residents who have not been charged with a crime. Authorities have previously said that Khalil was arrested because he “led activities aligned to Hamas,” without providing evidence for how Khalil was aligned with the terrorist organization, and he has not been charged with a crime.

Specifically, the group is suing to stop Columbia University and Barnard College from producing “all student or student-worker disciplinary records” to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce. The committee had demanded records relating to eleven incidents. This information “likely involves the records of hundreds of students, and to enjoin the University from producing the requested documents or any other student records prior to a finding by this Court,” the court records read.

“The Committee’s Letter is clearly intended to chill the protected speech of University’s students through two primary means: (1) by exposing the students to negative publicity and investigation, pervasive and persistent harassment, doxing, and threats to their safety and lives, and (2) by compelling the University to discipline and punish students, including the four Plaintiffs, as well as to turn over those students’ (as well as faculty and staff’s) private disciplinary records,” it adds.

The committee’s February letter includes sections such as “Columbia Let Students Arrested in Hamilton Hall Off the Hook After Promising to Expel Them,” and “Numerous Antisemitic Incidents Have Taken Place at Columbia Since the Fall 2024 Semester Began.” It then demands all the disciplinary records for the incidents, including the April 2024 takeover of Hamilton Hall and the obstruction of Columbia’s entrance and harassment of Jewish students in September 2024.

The court record argues that “Ultimately, the Committee’s Letter demands that the University violate its own contractual obligations to its students, as well as its obligations to protect student privacy under FERPA, and, in effect coerces the University to ignore the law by making oblique threats to the “billions in federal funding the Universities receive.”

Columbia University did not immediately respond to a request for comment.