Mahmoud Khalil asks Supreme Court to decide if courts can hear his detention case

Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestinian activist whose arrest by immigration agents last year became a flashpoint in the fight over campus speech and immigration enforcement, asked the Supreme Court on Monday to decide whether federal district courts can hear constitutional challenges to his detention — a question that, if the justices take it up, could reshape how thousands of immigrants nationwide contest confinement they say is unlawful.

The petition for a writ of certiorari, filed on a court-approved deadline that Justice Samuel Alito had twice extended at Khalil's request, according to the Supreme Court's own docket, asks the justices to review a January ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that found federal district courts generally lack jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus challenges to immigration detention while removal proceedings are ongoing. Khalil's lawyers argue that ruling, if left standing, would force people contesting detention they say is retaliatory or unconstitutional to "remain imprisoned for months or years" before any court can review their claims. The petition itself, filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights along with co-counsel, contends that "federal judges must retain the authority to promptly review claims of detention imposed in retaliation" for speech protected by the First Amendment.

How the case reached this point

Immigration agents arrested Khalil, a lawful permanent resident, at his Columbia University-owned residence on March 8, 2025, days after he helped lead campus protests against Israel's military campaign in Gaza. He was transferred more than a thousand miles away to a detention facility in Louisiana. Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a rarely used provision of immigration law empowering the secretary to seek deportation of a noncitizen whose presence the government determines carries adverse foreign-policy consequences, and federal officials separately accused Khalil of contributing to what they described as an antisemitic atmosphere on campus, allegations Khalil has denied.

U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz ordered Khalil released on June 20, 2025, finding his continued confinement was likely unconstitutional. The government appealed, and on Jan. 15, 2026, a divided three-judge panel of the Third Circuit reversed, ruling 2-1 that the Immigration and Nationality Act required Khalil to raise his claims through the immigration court system first, with review by a federal appeals court only after a final removal order — not through an immediate habeas petition in district court. The panel's order did not reach the merits of Khalil's First Amendment arguments. On May 22, the full Third Circuit declined to rehear the case en banc by a 6-5 vote, with Judge Cheryl Ann Krause dissenting, joined by Judges Luis Felipe Restrepo and Arianna Freeman. The court stayed its own ruling to allow Khalil time to seek Supreme Court review, meaning he remains free while the petition is pending.

Separately, an immigration judge has already ordered Khalil's removal from the United States, and the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld that order; Khalil is contesting it in a parallel case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Monday's Supreme Court petition does not ask the justices to decide whether Khalil should ultimately be deported — only whether a district court had the power to hear his constitutional challenge to being detained in the first place.

The legal question, and why it matters beyond one case

The government's foreign-policy ground for removal, codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(C), makes a noncitizen deportable if the secretary of state has reasonable grounds to believe the person's presence or activities would have "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences" for the United States. A companion provision bars removal based solely on protected speech or associations unless the secretary personally determines removal is necessary to compromise a "compelling" foreign-policy interest — the provision at the center of Khalil's underlying First Amendment claim. Congress added the foreign-policy removal ground in 1990, and for most of its history the government almost never invoked it.

Khalil's petition leans heavily on the argument that the jurisdictional question — whether a habeas petition can go directly to a district court, rather than being funneled through years of immigration-court proceedings first — is one the government itself has urged the Supreme Court to resolve in a separate, related case, Trump v. Suri, which raises a similar jurisdictional question for a different detained noncitizen. Khalil's lawyers argue the Court should take up his case alongside or in tandem with that one, since both turn on how much power district courts retain to hear habeas claims from immigrants in detention.

Reaction

Writing on social media Monday, Khalil said the government's underlying case against him amounted to "baseless allegations and smears" that "cannot survive the slightest scrutiny in federal court," and accused the administration of trying instead to "channel it into its kangaroo immigration courts." He added: "If the Trump administration can punish someone for pro-Palestine speech, this or any future administration can punish anyone." After the Third Circuit's earlier ruling, Center for Constitutional Rights legal director Baher Azmy called the panel's decision a "greenlight" for holding people in "prolonged, brutal detention conditions," while ACLU senior counsel Brett Max Kaufman said in a statement that the appeals court ruling was "not the final word." A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said at the time that the department intended to continue pursuing what it has described as Khalil's lawful removal order.

What happens next

The Supreme Court has not yet docketed a case number for Monday's petition or indicated whether it will take up the case. Under the Court's ordinary practices, the government will have an opportunity to file a response before the justices decide whether to grant review, a process that typically takes several weeks to months. Because the Third Circuit's stay remains in place, Khalil is not currently at risk of being returned to immigration detention while the petition is pending, though his separate removal case continues to move forward in the Fifth Circuit regardless of what the Supreme Court decides to do with Monday's filing.