On a recent afternoon, Mahmoud Khalil sat in his Manhattan apartment, cradling his 10-week-old son as he thought back to the pre-dawn hours spent pacing a frigid immigration jail in Louisiana, awaiting news of the child’s birth in New York.

Khalil, 30, who was a key negotiator and spokesperson during Columbia University's pro-Palestinian campus protests, has filed the complaint under the Federal Tort Claims Act.