Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate whose arrest by immigration agents became a flashpoint over campus protest crackdowns, asked the Supreme Court on Monday to take up his case and rule on whether federal courts can quickly review detentions like his, according to a press release from the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents him.

Khalil, a legal U.S. permanent resident born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, was arrested by ICE in March 2025 and held for 104 days at a detention facility in Louisiana before a federal judge in New Jersey ordered his release in June 2025. He has not been charged with any crime.

The Legal Question

The petition challenges a January ruling from the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found — in a 6-5 decision against rehearing the case — that the New Jersey judge lacked jurisdiction to order Khalil's release while his immigration case was still working through the immigration court system. Khalil's lawyers argue the Immigration and Nationality Act does not bar federal courts from hearing habeas corpus claims when a detention is alleged to be punitive or retaliatory, rather than a routine part of removal proceedings.

Government lawyers have maintained that Congress intentionally routed such disputes through immigration courts and the appeals process rather than federal district courts, and that the 3rd Circuit's ruling correctly applied that structure.

HE HAS NOT BEEN CHARGED WITH ANY CRIME

It remains unclear whether the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case at all, let alone when it might decide. The justices typically take months to act on a petition for certiorari, and a grant requires votes from at least four justices.

A Separate Fight Over Deportation

Khalil's Supreme Court petition addresses only the detention question. He is pursuing a separate appeal, to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, challenging the government's final order of removal against him directly. That case proceeds independently of whatever the justices decide about his detention claim.

Khalil's case has drawn sustained attention since his arrest, both from immigrant-rights groups who call it a test of free-speech protections for noncitizens and from administration officials who have defended the arrest as a legitimate immigration enforcement action unconnected to his activism. Monday's filing sets up what could become the most consequential test yet of how far federal courts can go in reviewing immigration detentions the government disputes.