Mahmoud Khalil asks Supreme Court to decide whether federal courts can review his detention

Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to review a Third Circuit ruling that blocked his challenge to his 2025 immigration detention, Common Dreams reported. The petition comes after Justice Samuel Alito twice extended the deadline for filing it, with the most recent deadline set for October 19, according to the Supreme Court docket.

Khalil was detained on March 8, 2025, when he was a lawful permanent resident. The government charged him as removable under a provision of immigration law known as the foreign policy ground, based on a determination by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that his otherwise lawful expressive activity would “compromise a compelling foreign policy interest,” according to a filing by his lawyers. Within hours of his arrest, they filed a habeas petition in the Southern District of New York challenging both his detention and his deportation on constitutional grounds.

How the case reached the Supreme Court

The case was transferred to the District of New Jersey, where Khalil was in custody. That court granted a preliminary injunction on June 11, 2025, barring the government from detaining him or seeking to remove him based on the Rubio determination, and on June 20 ordered him released on bail, according to his lawyers’ filing.

On January 15, 2026, a divided panel of the Third Circuit vacated those orders. The panel’s majority concluded that a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. section 1252(b)(9), strips federal courts of jurisdiction over Khalil’s First and Fifth Amendment challenges to his detention as well as his removal, his lawyers wrote. The decision is reported at 164 F.4th 259. According to the filing, no judge on the panel reached the merits of the injunction or the bail order.

On May 22, the full Third Circuit denied rehearing by a vote of 6 to 5. The New York Civil Liberties Union said Judge Krause wrote for the five judges who voted to rehear the case and said of the courts’ role: “We cannot fulfill that role if we write ourselves out of relevance and leave the Executive Branch to check itself.”

The appeals court stayed its mandate on May 26 and clarified the order on June 4. Under those orders, the mandate stays on hold for 90 days from the denial of rehearing and for up to 30 more days if the Supreme Court grants an extension, and it remains stayed pending the justices’ final disposition if a timely petition is filed, the filing said.

The questions in the petition

An earlier application by Khalil’s lawyers outlined the issues the petition would raise. They include whether the section of immigration law removes a district court’s habeas jurisdiction over a constitutional challenge to detention when no federal court could otherwise review that detention. They also ask whether reading the section to bar habeas review of detention claims would violate the Constitution’s Suspension Clause.

The Supreme Court docket shows the lawyers applied on July 15 to move the deadline from August 20 to September 21, the government opposed the request on July 17, and Justice Alito granted it on July 27. A second application filed September 9 sought to move the deadline to October 19, and Justice Alito granted it on September 17. The docket shows no opposition to the second application.

Who is representing Khalil

The filing lists lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, the CLEAR project at the City University of New York School of Law, Washington Square Legal Services, Van Der Hout LLP and Dratel and Lewis. Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Brett Max Kaufman of the American Civil Liberties Union are among those named.

The New York Civil Liberties Union said in May that Khalil had also appealed to the Fifth Circuit, asking it to reverse a Board of Immigration Appeals removal order, and that the team had asked the board to reopen his case on the basis of new evidence of possible government misconduct. The organization said that appeal would proceed whatever happened with the Third Circuit stay.