Khalil Asks SCOTUS to Restore Judicial Review of Immigration Detention — Against a Circuit Split the Government Wants Decided Its Way
NEW (filed Mon. Oct. 19, reported Oct. 22, 2026): Mahmoud Khalil — the Palestinian activist and lawful permanent resident detained over his role in Columbia's 2024 pro-Palestinian demonstrations — petitioned the Supreme Court to let federal judges quickly determine the legality of immigration-related detentions, so people cannot be held "for months or years without judicial oversight." The target is the Third Circuit's ruling this year that federal courts lack jurisdiction to review detention legality until immigration courts have fully run their course. The Third Circuit has stayed its mandate so Khalil can appeal; he remains free, after a New Jersey federal judge ordered him released last year on constitutional grounds.
Khalil framed the stakes beyond his own case — the appeal is "bigger than just my ability to stay here" — and said the administration wants review channeled into "kangaroo" immigration courts where it can control the outcome, because its "baseless allegations and smears against me cannot survive the slightest scrutiny in federal courts." DHS's statement answered: "It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America... We would encourage him to use the CBP Home app and self-deport."
The cert petition lands into a live circuit split the government is already exploiting: it has separately asked the Court to take the Fourth Circuit's ruling in Badar Khan Suri's case — which upheld a judge's release order and directly conflicts with the Third Circuit's Khalil decision. Conflicting rulings raise the odds of review; argument would likely come next year. This sits alongside the Court's already-granted review of the mandatory-detention/no-bond-hearing policy (cert granted Oct. 1, SCOTUS Takes Up Trump's Mandatory-Detention Policy: Cert Grant Sets Up a Definitive Ruling on Bond Hearings for Detained Immigrants) — together a term-defining cluster on whether courts can check detention at all, and when.
What it means: the administration's detention architecture is now running two complementary plays at the high court — strip district courts of habeas-style jurisdiction over immigration detention (Khalil/Suri), and eliminate bond hearings for the detained (the Oct. 1 cert grant).1 If both land for the government, detention becomes effectively unreviewable until removal proceedings end — the single largest unchecked-power question on the post-midterm docket.
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An instance of The fight has moved from the rulings to the courts' right to judge. — The government's two-pronged play would make detention effectively unreviewable until removal ends — contesting the courts' power to judge detention at all rather than the detention rulings themselves. ↩︎