Mahmoud Khalil Sues Columbia and Lawmakers to Keep Activists’ Names Secret

Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate detained by the Trump administration last weekend, and seven students asked a federal court on Thursday to block the school from producing student disciplinary records to a House committee that demanded them last month.

The committee’s request and the school’s compliance with it would violate the First Amendment rights of Mr. Khalil and the students and the university’s obligation to protect student privacy, the lawsuit said.

The seven students, who currently attend Columbia and Barnard College, according to the suit, also asked the court to allow them to proceed anonymously and are referred to in the lawsuit with pseudonyms like Sally Roe and Ned Noe.

Last month, the House Committee on Education and Workforce sent a letter to Dr. Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, and the university board chairs, David Greenwald and Claire Shipman, that said “numerous antisemitic incidents” had taken place.

It demanded disciplinary records connected to 11 incidents dating to the previous school year, including the student occupation of Hamilton Hall last April, a protest against a class taught by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the disruption of an Israeli history class.

Mr. Khalil, a prominent figure in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the campus, was arrested by federal immigration agents in New York on Saturday and is being held in Louisiana.

He has not been charged with any crime. But the Trump administration has accused him of siding with terrorists and justified his detention by citing a little-used statute that allows the secretary of state to deport anyone whose presence is “adversarial” to foreign policy and national security interests.

The White House has said that Mr. Khalil is only the first of many whom it plans to detain and deport.

This is a developing story and will be updated.