Attorneys for Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University student who last year became the face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestine speech, will ask the US supreme court to intervene after a federal appeals court opened the door for the government to once again detain and ultimately deport him.
On Friday, the third circuit court of appeals upheld a January ruling by a three-judge panel, which had reversed a lower-court decision ordering Khalil’s release on bail last June. The ruling marks the latest chapter in Khalil’s months-long challenge of the government’s campaign against him. The appeals court’s decision marks a significant setback for him, but his lawyers insist he cannot be deported – for now.
“We hope the supreme court will recognize how dangerous the third circuit’s decision was, not just for Mahmoud but for other non-citizens the administration has its vengeful sights upon,” said Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and part of Khalil’s legal team. “That ruling greenlights holding someone in prolonged, brutal detention conditions without access to meaningful judicial review in order to punish them and deter others from dissenting from US foreign policy.”
The third circuit judges were split on the decision – with six voting against and five in favor of Khalil’s request to reverse the earlier ruling.
In a dissenting opinion, three of the judges who voted against argued that the majority’s ruling “ignores canons”, “strains precedent” and “imperils the civil liberties of [Khalil] and similarly situated noncitizens”.
Khalil’s attorneys said that they planned to ask the court to pause the decision’s implementation so they can bring the matter to the US supreme court.
Khalil is also fighting the government’s attempt to remove him in a separate legal case moving through the immigration court system. Earlier this month, his legal team filed a motion asking an immigration appeals court to reopen and throw out that case after evidence emerged that the Trump administration had improperly fast-tracked it and tried to predetermine its outcome.
Still, Friday’s ruling is a notable loss for Khalil and sets a dangerous precedent for others seeking to challenge their detention in federal court at a time when the Trump administration has politicized the immigration court system in unprecedented ways.
“What the administration wants to do is litigate his removability in the immigration court process – what I call the president’s courts,” said Azmy. “It’s a total sham process that’s designed to carry out their plan to deport him.”
Khalil, a US permanent resident who is married to a US citizen, was detained in his Columbia University housing in March 2025 – the first of several foreign students and scholars the administration targeted over their pro-Palestine advocacy. He had been a lead negotiator between the university and student protesters during the spring 2024 encampments.
Khalil has remained defiant throughout the ordeal and since being released last year has become a far more prominent advocate.
“The administration wants to arrest, detain and deport me to intimidate everyone speaking out for Palestine across this country, and they are willing to violate longstanding US rules and procedures to do it,” he said recently. “But no lies, corruption, or ideological persecution will stop me from advocating for Palestine and for everyone’s right to free speech.”
Khalil missed the birth of his first son while in detention in an Immigrationa nd Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Louisiana last year. His lawyers argued that he would suffer “irreparable harm” if forced to remain in detention while his immigration case proceeded – and a federal court ultimately sided with him and found that he was likely to succeed in his claim that the government’s actions had been unconstitutional. An appeals court struck down that decision in January after it concluded that the federal judge who ordered his release did not have jurisdiction over the case, which it said needed to remain in the immigration court system.
Attorneys for Khalil warn that the panel’s decision effectively blocks anyone in immigration proceedings from challenging their detention on first amendment grounds until those proceedings have run their course – “no matter how long they may take or how unconstitutional the basis for their detention”, they wrote in a recent statement.
The judges in the dissent agreed. “The Judiciary ‘serves as an inseparable element of the constitutional system of checks and balances’ protecting civil liberties and checking legislative and executive discretion,” they wrote. “We cannot fulfill that role if we write ourselves out of relevance and leave the Executive Branch to check itself.”
The Trump administration originally maintained that Khalil – as well as other foreign scholars it detained over their pro-Palestine advocacy – posed a threat to the government’s foreign policy objectives in fighting antisemitism, citing a little-used immigration statute from the McCarthy era. So far, that claim has not been tested in court, with the government choosing to fight Khalil’s appeal on jurisdictional grounds instead.
Government lawyers later argued that Khalil’s deportation would be justified on the grounds that he omitted details in his green card application – claims his lawyers have vehemently rejected.
Courts have expressed reservations over the government’s argument and last fall, a federal judge in Boston ruled in a blistering opinion in a related case that the detentions of pro-Palestinian students had been unconstitutional and designed to chill speech.
During that trial, immigration officials involved in the detentions revealed that government officials had relied on dossiers compiled by far-right, pro-Israel groups to target those students.
While the administration, and the president himself, called Khalil a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student” and a “terrorist sympathizer”, he has been a nuanced voice in his criticism of Israel and has repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism, saying it has “no place” in the Palestine solidarity movement.
“I grew up in a community that valued human rights and valued principles beyond religion, beyond race,” he said in a recent interview with the Jewish publication the Forward. ““I know it might sound like a very ideal utopia, but this is what we should aspire for: to get a place where there’s no more conflict, no more killing in that place and it’s open to anyone who wants to call it their home or their Holy Land.”
