The Trump administration scored a major win Thursday in its fight to deport anti-Israel activist and former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil when a federal appeals court overturned a decision freeing him from custody – a ruling that could lead to a showdown at the US Supreme Court.
A split three-judge panel on the Philadelphia-based Third Circuit Court of Appeals found Newark federal Judge Michael Farbiarz didn’t have the authority to order Khalil’s release from a Louisiana detention facility this past June.
Instead, the case should have been allowed to work its way through the immigration court system.
A federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that a judge had no jurisdiction to order the release of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil from immigration detention.
Only after that process was complete, the panel ruled, could Khalil mount a legal challenge to his detention and prospective deportation.
“The scheme Congress enacted governing immigration proceedings provides Khalil a meaningful forum in which to raise his claims later on — in a petition for review of a final order of removal,” read the opinion by Judges Thomas Hardiman and Stephanos Bibas, appointed by former President George W. Bush and President Trump, respectively.
The judges didn’t rule on the validity of Khalil’s arguments in his habeas corpus petition, alleging the Trump administration violated his right to free speech by trying to throw him out of the country over his campus activism protesting Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
Khalil can request the Third Circuit review Thursday’s ruling en banc or he could seek to take the case up to the US Supreme Court.
It was not immediately clear whether the feds would arrest Khalil again while the legal saga continued.
An immigration judge ordered Khalil to be deported to either Algeria or Syria but that decision hasn’t been affirmed yet by an immigration board.
Khalil’s lawyer, Baher Azmy, said they were disappointed by the ruling and claimed it was “contrary to rulings of other federal courts.” The lawyer also noted that the decision didn’t address the heart of Khalil’s petition, rather focusing on a “hypertechnical jurisdictional matter.”
“Our legal options are by no means concluded, and we will fight with every available avenue,” Azmy said.
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The lawyer said Khalil would stay out of jail until the appeal of Thursday’s ruling was concluded over the span of months or longer.
Khalil, 30, a legal permanent resident, was arrested on March 8, 2025, by ICE and was sent to a jail in Louisiana for three months, forcing him to miss the birth of his first child.
Khalil attends a pro-Palestinian protest outside Columbia University, on the two-year anniversary of the deadly October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas from Gaza. REUTERSThe Trump administration claimed the arrest was legal, citing a rarely-used statue allowing deportations of non-citizens who threaten foreign policy interests.
But Khali has said he was targeted as a “direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocate for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”
Khalil’s lawyers claimed he might be killed if he’s deported to Algeria or Syria — the countries of his ancestry and birth, respectively.
With Post wires
