Mahmoud Khalil asks US supreme court to review his deportation case

Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil speaks during a press conference outside Columbia University in New York, New York, on 14 September 2026. Photograph: Sarah Yenesel/EPAView image in fullscreenPro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil speaks during a press conference outside Columbia University in New York, New York, on 14 September 2026. Photograph: Sarah Yenesel/EPAMahmoud Khalil asks US supreme court to review his deportation caseA ruling against Khalil could impact the rights of immigrants to challenge their detention in federal court

Attorneys for Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University student who has become the symbol of the Trump administration’s crusade against pro-Palestinian speech, have petitioned the US supreme court to review his case – the final chapter in a months-long legal saga that could determine countless foreign citizens’ ability to challenge their detention by US immigration authorities in federal court.

Khalil, a US permanent resident who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, was arrested in his Columbia housing in March 2025, the first of several foreign students and scholars the Trump administration targeted over their advocacy for Palestinian rights. He was detained for more than three months in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Louisiana before a federal judge in New Jersey, where he had been briefly held before ICE moved him, ordered him released while his immigration process proceeds.

“This fight is not only about whether I get to stay in this country, it’s really about whether anyone in this country can speak out for Palestinians without being punished for it,” Khalil said during a press conference on Monday.

The US departments of state, justice and homeland security did not respond to requests for comment.

The government has cited an obscure McCarthy-era law to argue that Khalil and the other scholars’ pro-Palestinian expression posed a threat to US foreign policy objectives. So far, no court has fully weighed in on the constitutionality of the law, with legal arguments instead focused on whether district courts have the authority to order people released from immigration detention while their immigration cases are under way. Khalil’s attorneys and immigrants rights advocates warn that if the supreme court rules the district courts lack such authority, that would effectively result in people the government has detained unconstitutionally to languish in immigration detention with no recourse, potentially for months or years.

“It’s terrifying,” said Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is part of Khalil’s legal team. “What’s particularly dangerous about this decision is the idea that you can be in detention based on some arbitrary executive diktat – and there is nothing you can do to challenge it.”

The New Jersey judge who ordered Khalil’s release had done so on the basis that his detention was likely to be found unconstitutional on first amendment grounds, because Khalil was targeted over constitutionally protected speech. In a related case, a federal judge in Boston ruled last year that those protections apply to noncitizens.

But a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania reversed the New Jersey judge’s decision that freed Khalil in January, with an expanded panel upholding that reversal in a 6-5 split decision. In a dissenting opinion, three of the judges who voted against argued that the ruling flaunted legal precedent and “imperil[ed] the civil liberties of [Khalil] and similarly situated noncitizens”.

If the supreme court takes the case, lawyers expect arguments to take place in the spring. If it declines, or if it upholds the third circuit’s decision, Khalil could immediately be redetained and deported, and may continue to make his case from overseas.

Mohsen Mahdawi and Badar Khan Suri, two other foreign scholars detained by the administration after Khalil, are also challenging their detention through the federal court system. In Khan Suri’s case, an appeals court in Virginia upheld a lower court’s order to release him, splitting from the court that ruled on Khalil’s case. The government has asked the supreme court to review that decision, and the court might decide to review the cases jointly. In Mahdawi’s case, the second court of appeals in New York initially sided with the government but has since ordered the case to be reheard.

Should the supreme court rule against Khalil, the decision would impact scores of people in immigration detention who would effectively be unable to challenge their detention through the judiciary – which has traditionally been more isolated from political interference than immigration courts, which are overseen by the executive branch.

“This administration knows all too well that its baseless allegations and smears against me cannot survive the slightest scrutiny in federal court,” Khalil said on Monday. “That’s why it’s doing everything it can to keep the federal courts away from looking at my case and they’re trying to channel it into their kangaroo immigration courts, because they can control the outcome.”

“We want to be in a constitutional court, a real court, while they want us to be in the president’s courts,” Azmy said of the jurisdictional dispute.