A new federal lawsuit is accusing one of President Donald Trump’s most powerful White House aides of helping construct a private-public deportation operation designed to identify, arrest and remove Palestinian activists from the United States.

At the center of the complaint is White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in New York, alleges that Miller worked alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, conservative policy figures and outside nationalist organizations to target lawful residents for deportation because of their political speech.

The case was brought under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a Reconstruction-era civil rights law created to combat conspiracies that use threats, intimidation or force to deprive people of constitutional protections.

Its plaintiff is Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian permanent resident and former Columbia University student who became a prominent figure in campus protests over Gaza.

Khalil was arrested by plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in March 2025, according to the complaint.

He was then held for 104 days in a Louisiana detention facility more than 1,300 miles from his pregnant wife.

Now, his attorneys argue that the arrest was not an isolated immigration enforcement action.

They claim it was part of a coordinated political campaign.

The defendants named in the suit include Miller, Rubio and several private organizations, including Betar, a nationalist group whose own spokesperson allegedly described it as operating a “vigilante force.”

According to the filing, a representative of Betar acknowledged in January 2025 that the organization had communicated directly with Miller and Rubio.

The group allegedly provided government officials with a prepared list of Palestinian activists it wanted arrested and deported.

That allegation lies at the heart of the lawsuit.

If true, it would mean a private political organization was not merely advocating for tougher immigration enforcement. It was allegedly helping choose individual targets and supplying their names to senior administration officials.

The complaint says Betar openly celebrated Khalil’s arrest the following day.

“As we said 5 weeks ago, Khalil is on our deport list,” the group reportedly wrote on X, according to the filing.

“We have provided information on many others who will shortly as well be detained and deported.”

The post appeared to boast that the organization had advance knowledge of the arrest and played a role in identifying other people for removal.

That same day, Miller issued his own public warning.

People “who sympathize with terrorism are unwelcome on our shores,” he wrote, adding that they would be denied entry or sent home.

The lawsuit argues that these statements were not coincidental.

Instead, Khalil’s attorneys allege they reflected a shared plan between White House officials and outside groups to punish pro-Palestinian activism by using immigration enforcement.

Miller has long been one of the administration’s most influential architects of hard-line immigration policy.

He has advocated mass deportations, stricter limits on legal immigration and aggressive use of executive power to remove people the administration considers threats to American interests.

But the complaint goes further than accusing him of promoting a harsh policy.

It alleges a conspiracy to strip targeted individuals of their constitutional rights.

The suit also names Victoria Coates, a Heritage Foundation official who helped develop a policy initiative known as “Project Esther.”

The complaint describes the project as a blueprint for confronting pro-Palestinian activism and claims Miller helped build the broader deportation strategy around it.

The filing quotes a book attributed to Coates in which Palestinians were described as having a “default mechanism” of “sadistic savagery.”

Khalil’s lawyers argue that such language reveals the ideological hostility behind the alleged campaign.

They contend Miller shared those views, worked closely with Heritage Foundation officials before returning to the White House and later used the power of government to transform the proposal into action.

None of those allegations has yet been proven at trial.

Miller, Rubio and the other defendants will have an opportunity to respond, challenge the evidence and seek dismissal of the complaint.

Still, Miller’s own public comments may become central to the case.

During an April 2025 Fox News interview, he was asked directly whether Khalil would be deported.

“Yes, he will,” Miller replied.

“As will anyone who preaches hate for America.”

To administration supporters, the remark may sound like a defense of national security and a warning against extremism.

To Khalil’s legal team, it could be evidence that senior officials had already decided the outcome of his immigration case based on his political expression.

The lawsuit arrives amid broader judicial criticism of the administration’s enforcement tactics.

A federal judge in a related Massachusetts case described agents as “snatching” people from public places and compared the operation to tactics associated with the Ku Klux Klan.

The judge said those methods appeared designed to frighten Americans into silence.

That language is extraordinary.

Federal judges rarely invoke the Klan when discussing contemporary government action. Its appearance in the dispute reflects the seriousness of the constitutional questions surrounding the arrests.

The government has broad authority over immigration and national security.

But permanent residents still possess constitutional rights, including protections for speech and due process. The government cannot legally deport someone solely because officials dislike that person’s political views.

That is the dividing line this lawsuit will test.

Were Khalil and others targeted because they posed a legitimate security threat?

Or were immigration laws used to punish political dissent?

The complaint claims the answer can be found in the alleged coordination between White House officials and the outside “vigilante” organization.

For Miller, the lawsuit represents more than another legal challenge to the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.

It places his personal conduct, private communications and relationships with activist groups under direct scrutiny.

The explosive allegation is that deportation decisions were not simply made inside federal agencies.

They were allegedly influenced by outside groups handing the White House lists of people they wanted removed.

If the case proceeds, attorneys may seek documents, messages and testimony that reveal how those lists were created, who received them and whether they shaped federal arrests.

For now, the claims remain allegations.

But the picture drawn by the complaint is chilling: private activists selecting targets, senior officials receiving their names and plainclothes agents arriving to take them away.

The lawsuit asks a federal court to decide whether that was immigration enforcement—or a political conspiracy operating under the power of the United States government.