“Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears” is a blog series documenting the harmful impact of President Trump’s judges on Americans’ rights and liberties. It includes judges nominated in both his first and second terms.
What’s at stake in this case?
The case involves whether a student who has been kept in detention and targeted for deportation because of his political activism can go to court to argue that he is being held illegally. The May 2026 case is Khalil v. President United States of America.
What happened in this case?
This case involves Mahmoud Khalil, a student at Columbia University who is a lawful permanent resident of the United States and married to a U.S. citizen. At Columbia, Khalil has been a high-profile protester for Palestinian rights.
In March 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that Khalil’s presence in the country could have adverse foreign policy consequences and could therefore be deported. He was then arrested by immigration agents at his home. After briefly detaining him in New Jersey, they moved him to Louisiana.
Khalil claims he was targeted for his political activism and is being held in detention in violation of the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee. A federal district court ordered him released from custody and ordered that he not be deported pending a final resolution of his case. The Trump administration appealed. In January, a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit ruled that Khalil had no right to have a court even hear his case until after immigration officials make their final decision. The 2-1 ruling interpreting the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA) was made possible by Trump judge Stephanos Bibas and over the dissent of Biden judge Arianna Freeman.
Khalil asked the full circuit court to reconsider the panel decision en banc.
How did the Trump judges rule?
In May, the court voted 6-5 to deny rehearing of the panel decision. Five of the six judges in the majority were Trump judges: Stephanos Bibas, David Porter, Paul Matey, Peter Phipps, and Jennifer Mascott. (Emil Bove did not participate in the case.) As is common in decisions not to review a panel decision, the majority did not explain its vote.
What did the dissenting judges say?
Obama judge Cheryl Krause wrote a dissent, joined by Judges Freeman and Felipe Restrepo (an Obama judge). She sharply criticized the majority for “evading” a binding 2012 Third Circuit case making clear that courts have jurisdiction in cases like this. In addition, she wrote that the majority had “redefined” a 2020 case addressing another aspect of Khalil’s appeal: the fact that the injury he is alleging (the loss of freedom of speech) can't be remedied months or years from now. Finally, independently of the other two reasons, she noted that Khalil’s claim that he was being unconstitutionally targeted made this the type of case that Congress did not strip courts of jurisdiction to hear.
Krause warned that the panel majority’s interpretation of the law violates the part of the Constitution limiting Congress’s ability to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. She concluded her dissent with an important reminder of the role that courts are supposed to play in protecting our freedom:
The Judiciary serves as an inseparable element of the constitutional system of checks and balances, protecting civil liberties and checking legislative and executive discretion. We cannot fulfill that role if we write ourselves out of relevance and leave the Executive Branch to check itself. Because the panel majority’s decision handcuffs the Judiciary’s ability to perform its constitutional duty to safeguard individual liberty and dismantles a critical component of the separation of powers, I respectfully dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc.
Khalil has appealed the Third Circuit’s ruling to the Supreme Court.
Why is the result harmful?
Habeas corpus is the legal principle that the government cannot arrest and hold someone without showing a lawful reason for their detention and without providing due process. It is fundamental to our freedom. Our courts are supposed to protect us from the types of abuses we are seeing from the Trump administration. The court’s adverse holding on access to habeas corpus relief is now applicable to states in the Third Circuit: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The case shows the importance of fair courts.