Mahmoud Khalil files $20 million suit over 3-month ICE detention

Courthouse News Service reports (Mahmoud Khalil files $20 million suit over 3-month ICE detention) that "activist Mahmoud Khalil filed a $20 million lawsuit Monday over the 104-day immigration detention that prevented him from attending the birth of his first child.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Khalil in the lobby of his apartment building on March 9, 2025. He was transferred to an ICE detention center in Louisiana and held for more than three months until a federal judge ruled his detention was unconstitutional and ordered his release."

The complaint alleges that “This was no ordinary arrest and detention subject to regularized administrative process or reasoned deliberation. Instead, with a target in sight who could not be charged with any actual crime, federal officials sought to weaponize the immigration process in an unprecedented manner to ensure his arrest, detention and deportation in order to send an in terrorem message to all noncitizens that advocacy in support of Palestinian rights will be punished with maximal state repression.”