Appeals Court Reverses Decision That Freed Pro-Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil | EUROtoday

A federal appeals panel on Thursday reversed a decrease court docket choice that launched former Columbia University graduate scholar Mahmoud Khalil from an immigration jail, bringing the federal government one step nearer to detaining and in the end deporting the Palestinian activist.

A 3-judge panel of the third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia instructed the decrease court docket to dismiss Khalil’s habeas petition, a court docket submitting that secured his launch. The panel dominated that the federal district court docket in New Jersey didn’t have jurisdiction over the matter as a result of immigration challenges are dealt with otherwise beneath the regulation.

In a 2-1 choice, the panel dominated that federal immigration legal guidelines require deportation challenges to be made by submitting a petition for overview of a ultimate order of removing with a federal appeals court docket — not a lower-level district court docket.

“That scheme ensures that petitioners get just one bite at the apple—not zero or two,” the panel wrote. “But it also means that some petitioners, like Khalil, will have to wait to seek relief for allegedly unlawful government conduct.”

The regulation bars Khalil “from attacking his detention and removal in a habeas petition,” the panel added.

Messages despatched to Khalil and his authorized staff weren’t instantly returned.

The choice marked a serious win for the Trump administration’s sweeping marketing campaign to detain and deport noncitizens who joined protests towards Israel.

It is probably going not the ultimate phrase in Khalil’s multipronged authorized battle. Lawyers for the 30-year-old Palestinian activist have mentioned they may exhaust all attraction choices.

An outspoken chief of the pro-Palestinian motion at Columbia, Khalil was arrested at his residence on March 8, 2025. He then spent three months detained in a Louisiana immigration jail, lacking the start of his firstborn son.

Federal officers have accused Khalil of main actions “aligned to Hamas,” although they haven’t offered proof to again up the declare and haven’t accused him of legal conduct.

The authorities has justified the arrest beneath a seldom-used statute that enables for the expulsion of noncitizens whose beliefs are deemed to pose a risk to U.S. overseas coverage pursuits.

In June, a federal choose in New Jersey dominated that justification would possible be declared unconstitutional and ordered Khalil launched.

President Donald Trump’s administration then appealed that ruling, arguing the deportation choice ought to in the end fall to an immigration choose, moderately than a federal court docket. They have additionally accused Khalil of failing to reveal info on his inexperienced card software.

Khalil has dismissed these allegations as “baseless and ridiculous,” framing his arrest and detention as a “direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”

The appeals court docket choice comes as an appeals board within the immigration court docket system is weighing a earlier order from an immigration choose that discovered Khalil may very well be deported. His attorneys have argued that the federal order ought to take priority.

That choose has steered that Khalil may very well be deported to Algeria, the place he maintains citizenship by a distant relative, or Syria, the place he was born in a refugee camp to a Palestinian household.

His attorneys have mentioned he would face mortal hazard if he had been compelled to return to both nation.