During the early months of President Donald Trump’s second term, the federal government detained and sought to deport several students and academics because of their support for Palestine. The Supreme Court could soon take up the cases of two of those detainees, Mahmoud Khalil and Badar Khan Suri, both of whom have since been released. The issue at the center of these cases is whether federal trial courts have the power to consider challenges to the two men’s detentions, or whether (as the Trump administration argues) those challenges are instead barred by federal immigration law.
The Trump administration has urged the Supreme Court to grant both petitions, telling the justices that the court’s “review is warranted to resolve” a conflict among the federal courts of appeals “over a question of immigration jurisdiction that affects tens of thousands of cases.” “Left unchecked,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote, “such suits risk producing an overwhelming litigation burden on both the government and the courts.”
Sauer made that claim in the case of Suri, an Indian national with a Ph.D. in Peace and Conflict Studies who came to the United States in 2022 for a postdoctoral fellowship at Georgetown University. Sauer’s wife is a U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent; her father once served as an adviser to a leader in the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
In March 2025, Suri – who contended that he had “never even been to a protest” – was approached outside his suburban Virginia apartment by masked officers who told them that they were from DHS, that he was being arrested because of his “social media,” and that the government planned to deport him that day. (An analysis by The Hoya, the Georgetown University student newspaper, found that Suri’s social media posts “frequently express support for Palestine, especially since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza,” but that Suri “has never openly advocated breaking U.S. law.”) Secretary of State Marco Rubio had determined that Suri’s “Hamas associations and advocacy compromised the United States’ foreign-policy interests, thereby rendering him deportable.”
Suri’s attorney went to federal court in Virginia to seek his release. He argued in a habeas petition, which is a brief asking a federal district court to review the legality of his detention, that (among other things) Suri had been detained in retaliation for his speech. The district court issued an order on March 20 that barred the government from deporting Suri, and in May it instructed the government to release him on bail.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit turned down the government’s request to pause the district court’s ruling while it appealed, and in an opinion on July 23, 2026, that court upheld the district court’s decision.
The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on Sept. 21, asking the justices to decide whether a noncitizen like Suri who is placed in immigration detention while the government seeks to deport him can challenge his detention in a habeas petition when his claims are also related to whether he can be removed. Sauer wrote that federal immigration law generally requires all challenges “arising from” deportation proceedings or the decision to begin such proceedings to go first to a federal appeals court, rather than a district court. “That naturally includes claims raised by an alien that reduce to the assertion it is illegal to detain him for all of the same reasons that it is ultimately illegal to remove him.”
Sauer told the justices that, in addition to granting the Trump administration’s petition for review in Suri’s case, they might also want to take up the case of Mahmoud Khalil, an Algerian citizen who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 2024. Doing so, Sauer said, “would guard against the possibility that either case might become moot” – that is, no longer a live controversy – if, for example, either man leaves the United States.
Khalil was arrested on March 8 at his apartment building in New York City, where he had recently received a master’s degree from Columbia University. Khalil, who is married to a U.S. citizen, describes himself as a “lifelong advocate for Palestinian human rights” who has also “condemned anti-Semitism.” In the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, Khalil participated in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia.
The government sought to deport Khalil based on Rubio’s determination that Khalil’s “participation and role[] … in antisemitic protests and disruptive activities” would “compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.” On March 19, a federal district court in New Jersey barred the government from deporting Khalil to give that court time to consider his habeas petition. Khalil alleged, among other things, that his detention violated both the First Amendment, because it was intended to retaliate against him for his support of Palestine and to deter others from expressing that same support, and the Fifth Amendment, because it was intended to punish him. Approximately three months later, the New Jersey district court ordered Khalil’s release on bail.
In January of this year, a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled that the district court did not have the authority to consider Khalil’s challenges. “The scheme Congress enacted governing immigration proceedings provides Khalil a meaningful forum in which to raise his claims later on—in a petition for review of a final order of removal,” the majority wrote.
After the full 3rd Circuit declined to weigh in, Khalil came to the Supreme Court on Monday, asking the justices to take up his case. He stated that federal law “channels most challenges to the validity of a final order of removal through the administrative process and” petitions for review “of a final removal order to the court of appeals. But it does not, and could not, consistent with the U.S. Constitution, strip habeas courts of” the power to hear “constitutional challenges to executive detention that is retaliatory in violation of the First Amendment and punitive in violation of the Fifth Amendment.”
Suri’s response to the government’s petition for review is due on Nov. 20; the government’s response to Khalil’s petition will also be due in late November. The justices will likely consider both petitions at a private conference sometime early next year.