By Nate Raymond
May 22 (Reuters) – Lawyers for Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil vowed on Friday to take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, after a divided federal appeals court declined to reconsider a ruling that opened the door to President Donald Trump’s administration re-arresting and deporting the pro-Palestinian activist.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals split 6-5 along ideological lines to reject Khalil’s request to revisit a ruling a 2-1 panel of the Philadelphia-based court delivered in January that had concluded a lower-court judge had no jurisdiction to order his release from immigration detention last year.
He was among the most prominent of a number of foreign students detained last year by immigration authorities under the Trump administration after engaging in pro-Palestinian activism on their college campuses.
If the 3rd Circuit’s ruling is allowed to take effect, Khalil could face the prospect of being arrested again and deported, after the Board of Immigration Appeals in April rejected his appeal of an immigration judge’s order that he be removed to Algeria or Syria.
Baher Azmy, a lawyer for Khalil at the Center for Constitutional Rights, in a statement promised to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Khalil’s case and overturn the 3rd Circuit’s “dangerous” decision.
“That ruling greenlights holding someone in prolonged, brutal detention conditions without access to meaningful judicial review in order to punish them and deter others from dissenting from U.S. foreign policy,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Khalil, a prominent figure in pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, was arrested in March 2025 by immigration agents in the lobby of his university residence in Manhattan.
He walked out of a Louisiana immigrant detention center in June, after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden, in New Jersey, ordered the Department of Homeland Security to release him from custody.
In January, a 3rd Circuit panel overturned Farbiarz’s decision, saying that under the Immigration and Nationality Act, his claims could not be addressed through a district court and instead could be raised in an appeal of a removal order from an immigration judge.
Six judges appointed by Republican presidents on Friday voted against reconsidering that decision.
Five appointed by Democrats favored rehearing the case, including U.S. Circuit Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, who said the court’s decision handcuffed the judiciary’s ability to protect the civil liberties of non-citizens like Khalil.
“We cannot fulfill that role if we write ourselves out of relevance and leave the Executive Branch to check itself,” wrote Krause, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; additional reporting by Luc Cohen and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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