Mahmoud Khalil says MAGA world has targeted him like the KKK. He’s right.

US admin July 15, 2026 0 Comments

Mahmoud Khalil says MAGA world has targeted him like the KKK. He’s right.

Formerly detained Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil has filed a lawsuit against conservative activist groups and several members of the Trump administration that cites the Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law designed to thwart racist intimidation.

Khalil, a staunch critic of Israel’s government whom Trump officials have tried to deport, has become the face of the administration’s push to weaponize the government against liberals — particularly pro-Palestinian activists — and to censor speech on college campuses.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, accuses several current and former officials of a “conspiracy” to deprive Khalil of his rights. :

The federal officials who are a part of the conspiracy include Senior Presidential Advisor Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and John Armstrong, an official at the Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs.

The lawsuit contends that the officials were aided by pro-Israel groups — including The Heritage Foundation, via its dubious “Project Esther” initiative, and Canary Mission, a group known for releasing information on pro-Palestinian students and professors — in their effort to “terrorize and make an example of Mr. Khalil” in order to “intimidate and silence the growing movement for Palestinian rights and political freedom, in a manner the KKK Act was designed to proscribe when enacted during Reconstruction.”

The Associated Press reported that a White House spokesperson defended the executive branch’s “lawful authority to take actions that will protect the public and to ensure the integrity of our immigration system,” while a representative for The Heritage Foundation told Jerusalem News Syndicate that the group “will be undeterred by those attempting to silence us.” Other defendants don’t appear to have commented publicly.

Whether a court ultimately sides with Khalil is one thing. But there’s no question he and many others have endured intimidation that, in form and function, has resembled many of the tactics the KKK and its ideological allies have used to terrorize nonwhite people and groups that defend them.

The Trump administration has openly promoted white supremacist rhetoric — some of it mirroring propaganda from the early 20th century as the KKK came to prominence — while waging its racist anti-immigrant crackdown. The president and his allies have also framed Khalil as a “terrorist sympathizer” while touting immigration policies that, as I’ve explained, resemble policies endorsed by the KKK.

There’s also a well-documented history of the klan relying on wealthy financiers and sympathetic groups to help fuel their bigotry, as I noted when Vice President JD Vance co-hosted a fundraiser with someone who has endorsed the use of public hangings to show “masculine leadership.”

As to the basic question of whether the MAGA movement has comported itself as the klan once did in its quest to pursue enemies, the evidence speaks for itself. And it’s damning.