A federal appeals court ruled that a judge had no jurisdiction to order the release of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil from immigration detention, delivering President Donald Trump's administration a victory in its efforts to deport the anti-Israel activist on Thursday.
The 2-1 ruling by a panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals paves the way for Khalil's rearrest after it ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit he filed challenging his initial detention.
The court said that under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the district court that considered his lawsuit was not the proper forum to address his claims, which should have been heard through an appeal of a removal order from an immigration judge.
Khalil was among the most prominent of a number of foreign students detained last year after engaging in pro-Palestinian activism on their college campuses. While the ruling is likely to be appealed, if it stands, it could close off a legal avenue that many have used to challenge deportation orders.
Thursday's ruling came from US Circuit Judges Thomas Hardiman and Stephanos Bibas, both of whom were appointed by Republican presidents.
"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," they wrote in an unsigned opinion.
US Circuit Judge Arianna Freeman dissented, saying Congress did not mean to foreclose meaningful judicial review over Khalil's claims that his detention and potential re-detention violate his free speech rights under the US Constitution's First Amendment.
"Khalil claims that the government violated his fundamental constitutional rights," wrote Freeman, who was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden. "He has also alleged, and proven, irreparable injuries during his detention."
Khalil, in a statement, said the ruling is "deeply disappointing, but it does not break our resolve." His lawyers vowed to appeal the ruling, which does not take immediate effect, preventing his re-detention for now.
"The door may have been opened for potential re-detainment down the line, but it has not closed our commitment to Palestine and to justice and accountability," Khalil said.
The US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, did not respond to a request for comment.
Anti-Israeli campus activists arrested
Khalil, a prominent figure in anti-Israel protests against the Israel-Hamas War, was arrested on March 8 by immigration agents in the lobby of his university residence in Manhattan.
Trump had called the protests antisemitic and vowed to deport foreign students who took part. Khalil became the first target of this policy.
Though Khalil was initially detained in New York, by the time his lawyer sued over his detention there, immigration officials had moved him to New Jersey, leading his case to be transferred to a judge there.
He walked out of a Louisiana immigrant detention center in June, after US District Judge Michael Farbiarz of Newark, New Jersey, ordered the US Department of Homeland Security to release him from custody.
The Trump administration appealed, calling Farbiarz's ruling an "unprecedented" intrusion into its efforts to detain and deport a key figure in "violent and antisemitic riots and protests" that occurred at Columbia in 2024 over the war.
In September, an immigration judge ordered Khalil to be deported to Algeria or Syria over claims that he omitted information from his green card application. His lawyers have said they will appeal that order.
Thursday's ruling came hours before a federal judge in Boston was scheduled to consider whether to block the Trump administration from arresting, detaining, and deporting foreign students and faculty engaged in anti-Israel advocacy, after he concluded last year that the policy was unconstitutional.
US judge to restrict Trump efforts to deport pro-Palestinian campus activists
The federal judge said on Thursday he would issue an order designed to prevent Trump's administration from exacting "retribution" against academics who challenged its arresting, detaining, and deporting non-citizen, pro-Palestinian activists on US college campuses.
US District Judge William Young spoke at a hearing in Boston federal court, after finding in September that the US departments of State and Homeland Security violated the US Constitution's First Amendment by chilling free speech by the non-citizen academics on college campuses.
"The big problem in this case is that the cabinet secretaries, and ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment," Young said.
Young, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan and has criticized Trump's other actions in the past, called the administration's actions "appalling," and said it had "a fearful approach to freedom."
The judge said he would limit the reach of his order to members of academic associations including the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association that challenged the administration's actions.
Those groups had sought an order blocking the administration's practices nationally. Young called their proposal "overbroad," but a "sanction" was needed to remedy what he concluded was a conspiracy by top officials under Trump.
"We cast around the word 'authoritarian,'" Young said. "I don't, in this context, treat that in a pejorative sense, and I use it carefully, but it's fairly clear that this president believes, as an authoritarian, that when he speaks, everyone, everyone in Article II is going to toe the line absolutely."
Young said he would instead issue an order establishing a presumption that any change to the immigration status of those groups' members was in retribution for their participation in the case and require the government to prove in court it was seeking to deport them for other, "appropriate" reasons.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.