Former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to block his deportation after the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia declined on Friday to revisit a ruling that sharply limited his avenues of relief in the lower courts. The vote among the full circuit’s active judges was 6-5, a narrow margin that underscored the legal stakes of the case and the division within the appellate bench.
Khalil’s attorneys, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, said Friday they will immediately seek an order from the 3rd Circuit preventing the decision from taking effect while they petition the Supreme Court to review the matter. The stay request, if granted, would temporarily bar the government from detaining or deporting Khalil as the Supreme Court considers whether to hear the full appeal.
The ruling that the full circuit declined to revisit came from a three‑judge panel in January. That panel held that a federal judge in New Jersey — who had ordered Khalil’s release from immigration custody last year after finding that his prolonged detention likely violated his rights — lacked jurisdiction to decide the case. The panel’s reasoning centered on the venue rules governing immigration detention challenges, a legal question that Khalil’s lawyers contend was wrongly decided and that they now want the Supreme Court to settle.
Khalil, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in 2025 amid a broader Trump administration crackdown on foreign nationals who participated in campus protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The government has described Khalil as a national security threat and invoked statutory provisions that allow deportation of non‑citizens deemed to have engaged in activities endangering U.S. foreign policy interests. Khalil has not been charged with any crime.
His case has become one of the most visible immigration disputes of the Trump presidency’s second term, drawing intervention from civil liberties groups and university free‑speech advocates. Critics of the government’s position argue that the administration is weaponizing immigration enforcement to suppress constitutionally protected political expression, while the Justice Department maintains that the executive branch has broad authority to remove non‑citizens whose presence is judged harmful to the national interest.
The 3rd Circuit’s vote Friday leaves that debate in place but denies Khalil the jurisdictional foothold he had won in the New Jersey federal court. His legal team’s path now runs directly to Washington, where the Supreme Court would have to agree to hear the case before any further lower‑court proceedings could restart. The ACLU has not yet indicated how soon it will file the stay request or the petition for certiorari, but it signaled Friday that both filings are imminent.