Mahmoud Khalil Asks Supreme Court to Hear His Case, in a Fight Over Who Reviews Immigration Detentions

WASHINGTON

Mahmoud Khalil asked the US Supreme Court on Monday to take up his case, setting up a fight over a question much larger than one man’s detention: who gets to review the legality of an immigration detention, and when. According to the Associated Press and Reuters, Khalil — a Columbia University graduate and lawful permanent resident of the United States — petitioned the justices to overturn a ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia, issued earlier this year, which held that federal courts lack jurisdiction to review the legality of immigration detentions until immigration courts have fully considered each case.

What the 3rd Circuit decided

The 3rd Circuit ruled that immigration law barred the federal district judge in New Jersey from ordering Khalil’s release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, according to Reuters. The Associated Press reported the same holding in its account of the ruling. In practical terms, the appeals court’s reasoning channels challenges like Khalil’s into the immigration court system first, rather than allowing a federal district judge to intervene while that process runs. Khalil’s petition asks the Supreme Court to reject that sequencing. His lawyers argue, per the reports, that immigration law does not bar noncitizens from pursuing First Amendment retaliation claims in federal court — the legal theory at the heart of his case, which contends that he was detained because of his speech.

Khalil made that argument in personal terms at a remote news conference on Monday. “If the Trump administration can punish someone for their pro-Palestine speech, this or any future administration can punish anyone for any speech,” he said, according to the reports. He added that the case was “bigger than just my ability to stay here.” That framing — a detention case presented as a free-speech precedent — is the one his legal team is asking the justices to engage with, and it is the framing the government disputes.

How the case got here

Reuters reported that Khalil was detained last year over his participation in the spring 2024 pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University, and the Associated Press reported the same background. The government argued that his presence in the United States was harmful to US foreign policy interests. He spent more than three months in detention before Judge Michael Farbiarz, the federal district judge in New Jersey, ordered him freed, finding that the government had acted unconstitutionally. That release order is what the 3rd Circuit later undercut, holding that the district court lacked jurisdiction to issue it under immigration law.

The procedural posture is unusually tangled, and it matters. According to Reuters, even as Khalil asks the Supreme Court to restore the federal courts’ role, the underlying removal case has continued on its own track: in April, the Board of Immigration Appeals rejected his challenge to an immigration judge’s order that he be removed to Algeria or Syria. A separate appeal of that removal order is pending. Khalil is an Algerian citizen who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, per the reports — the two countries named in the removal order reflect that biography.

What happens if the ruling stands

If the 3rd Circuit’s ruling stands, Reuters reported, Khalil faces re-arrest and deportation following the Board of Immigration Appeals decision. For now, a lower-court order barring his re-detention remains in place until the Supreme Court rules on his petition, according to Reuters — meaning his liberty currently rests on an interim order whose lifespan is tied to the justices’ timetable. Reuters reported that the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the administration acted within its authority, and the department encouraged Khalil to self-deport.

There is also a human timeline underneath the legal one. Khalil’s detention last year, and the more than three months he spent in custody before Judge Farbiarz ordered his release, made his case a focal point for demonstrators, civil-liberties advocates and immigration lawyers well beyond Columbia’s campus, according to the reports. His petition now asks the justices to decide the jurisdictional question before the immigration process runs its remaining course — a sequencing fight that will also shape how quickly other detained noncitizens can get a federal judge, rather than an immigration judge alone, to hear a claim that they were punished for protected speech.

The Supreme Court has not said whether it will hear the case. Petitions are granted only when at least four justices vote to take a case, and many petitions are denied without comment — a denial here would leave the 3rd Circuit’s jurisdictional ruling in place within that circuit and leave Khalil’s separate removal appeal as his remaining legal avenue. A grant, by contrast, would put two big questions before the court in the coming term: how far Congress can go in channeling detention challenges away from federal district judges, and whether a noncitizen can bring a First Amendment retaliation claim in federal court when the government says immigration law closes that door.

For now, the case sits where so many consequential fights sit in October: in a petition, waiting on nine people in Washington. Khalil remains free under the existing order, the government maintains it acted lawfully, and the legal question he filed on Monday — who reviews a detention, and when — will be answered either by the justices or by their silence. The Previously news desk will follow the petition as it moves through the court’s conference process, and our coverage of the court’s new term has the wider docket context.