WASHINGTON 

Lawyers for Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request Thursday for communication between the Trump administration and several anti-Palestinian groups they allege played a role in their client’s arrest and detention.

“For years, these anti-Palestinian doxxing groups have served as agents of repression, weaponizing inflammatory rhetoric and conflating criticism of Israel with hate speech in order to chill activism for Palestinian rights,” Ayla Kadah, an attorney and Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) said in a statement.

“Now, evidence seems to point to the Trump administration colluding with them,” she said. “Mahmoud deserves answers, and so does the public.

Among the groups named in the request are Canary Mission, Betar USA, Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus, Columbia Alumni for Israel and others that have publicly posted information about Khalil and demanded his deportation.

Khalil, a Palestinian-American and legal permanent resident, has been held in a detention center in the US state of Louisiana since March after he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the lobby of his university-owned apartment building. He was taken into custody without a warrant and has not been charged with a crime.

His detention is part of a wider crackdown targeting students and academics involved in pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses.​​​​​​​

Pro-Israel website Canary Mission published a profile in January on Khalil, followed by a post from the pro-Israel group Betar USA claiming ICE was “aware of his home address.”