Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday against the Heritage Foundation, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and others, accusing them of participating in a coordinated effort to retaliate against him for his advocacy on Palestinian rights, Anadolu reports.
Khalil said the case was brought under the Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era civil rights law designed to combat conspiracies to deprive individuals of their constitutional rights.
“Today, I sued the Heritage Foundation, Stephen Miller, a Columbia affiliate, and others under the KKK Act,” he said, adding that this lawsuit is about “accountability and justice.”
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Khalil, a lawful US resident and a former Columbia University graduate student, was detained last March without a warrant by immigration officers in New York City and transferred to a detention facility in Louisiana, where he was held for months.
