Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil and seven of his fellow students sued the school and Congress on Thursday for handing over thousands of disciplinary records to the federal government as President Trump threatens to crack down on student protesters.
Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce subpoenaed Columbia for students’ records, then directed the university again in February to cough up more information.
Through the lawsuit, Khalil and anonymous students at Columbia and its affiliated women’s school, Barnard College, will ask a Manhattan federal judge to stop the House committee from compelling Columbia to provide records and the university from complying — plus seek monetary compensation for the documents that have already been forked over.
Their legal team suggested the records have set the stage for the Trump administration to move to deport Khalil and could threaten other Columbia students.
“There’s a groundwork that’s been laid over the past year,” Gadeir Abbas, senior litigation attorney at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said at a press conference in Midtown Manhattan. “They’ve been gathering disciplinary records from all across the country, and so the ingredients are in place for a real, unprecedented campaign. Or, if there is a precedent, you’d have the McCarthy hearings in the ’50s.”
Kendall Easley, a Columbia spokeswoman, said the university would not comment on pending litigation. The House committee did not immediately return a request for comment.
Khalil, 30, a green card holder, was arrested Saturday night by federal immigration agents as he returned home to his Columbia-owned apartment with his wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant. Khalil was an international affairs graduate student and a lead negotiator during campus protests.
The federal government has accused Khalil of leading activities aligned with Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Currently being detained in Louisiana, Khalil neither has been charged with a crime, but was present at antiwar protests. His detention has sparked widespread criticism and protests over its implications for free speech — even from Democratic lawmakers who have condemned Khalil’s political views.
In a post Monday on Truth Social, Trump warned that Khalil’s detention was “the first arrest of many to come.” “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again,” he wrote.
The attorneys said Trump’s threats have already had a chilling effect, with international students unsure about what their immigration status could mean for their ability to engage in activism and feeling “too afraid to leave their house.” Columbia has confirmed reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the streets around campus.
“[Students] feel like they’ve been betrayed by their institution, that they chose to go to because of its activist history,” said Amy Greer, an attorney at Dratel & Lewis, who is representing Khalil in a separate legal matter to demand his release. “For many of them, it is their own people who are being harmed. It is people who look like them who are being harmed, people who practice the same religion that they do who are being harmed.”