NEW YORK (AP) — Former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after a federal appeals court on Friday declined to reconsider a decision that put the government a step closer to deporting him, the pro-Palestinian activist’s lawyers said.
Judges on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia voted 6-5 against having the court's full complement of judges review the ruling. In January, a three-judge 3rd Circuit panel found that a federal judge in New Jersey who had sided with Khalil and ordered his release last year from immigration detention didn’t have jurisdiction to decide the matter.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which is involved in representing Khalil, said his lawyers will ask the 3rd Circuit for an order preventing the decision from taking effect — and barring Khalil from being detained or deported — while it asks the Supreme Court to take up the case.
An appeal to the high court is expected in the coming months, possibly in late summer.
“Today’s decision is not the final word, and we still strongly believe in our arguments going forward,” ACLU senior counsel Brett Max Kaufman said in a statement.
In its January ruling, the 3rd Circuit found that Khalil's lawsuit challenging his detention and U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz’s subsequent rulings in the case were premature because federal law requires that such challenges first move through the separate immigration court system. That system is part of the Justice Department, not the judicial branch.
The decision didn’t decide the key issue in Khalil’s case: whether the Trump administration’s effort to throw Khalil out of the U.S. over his campus activism and criticism of Israel is unconstitutional.
Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, who had voted for the 3rd Circuit to review the decision, wrote in a dissent that the court was “abdicating our duty to meaningfully review Khalil’s constitutional claims. The Judicial Branch, she wrote, cannot fulfill its role as a check on the other branches of government, “if we write ourselves out of relevance and leave the Executive Branch to check itself.”
Khalil, 31, has also appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana, where he was detained, after the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld his removal order.
Through his lawyers, Khalil argued that the immigration judge who issued the order failed to consider relevant evidence and wrongly upheld a charge that he had misrepresented information on his application for legal permanent resident status. That charge, Khalil's lawyers said, was brought in retaliation for his protest activity.
The immigration judge suggested Khalil could be deported to Algeria, where he maintains citizenship through a distant relative, or Syria, where he was born in a refugee camp to a Palestinian family. Khalil's lawyers have said he would face mortal danger if forced to return to either country.
An outspoken leader of the pro-Palestinian movement at Columbia, Khalil was arrested in March 2025. He then spent three months detained in a Louisiana immigration jail, missing the birth of his child.
Federal officials have accused Khalil of leading activities “aligned to Hamas,” though they have not presented evidence to support the claim and have not accused him of criminal conduct. They also accused Khalil of failing to disclose information on his green card application.
Khalil has dismissed the allegations as “baseless and ridiculous,” framing his arrest and detention as a “direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”
The government justified the arrest under a seldom-used statute that allows for the expulsion of noncitizens whose beliefs are deemed to pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests. In June 2025, Farbiarz ruled that justification would likely be declared unconstitutional and ordered Khalil released.
President Donald Trump’s administration appealed that ruling, arguing the deportation decision should fall to an immigration judge, rather than a federal court. The 3rd Circuit ruled 2-1 in the administration’s favor.
Judge Emil Bove, who was involved in investigating student protesters while a top Justice Department official, did not participate in the 3rd Circuit vote on whether to review the decision. He later issued an order denying a request by Khalil's lawyers that he step aside from the matter, calling it moot.
Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this story.
FILE - Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil holds a news conference outside Federal Court, Oct. 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
Activists detained when their flotilla attempted to breach Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza say they have been mistreated at the hands of Israeli soldiers, describing beatings, tasers and attack dogs.
The Global Sumud Flotilla of 50 boats was intercepted in international waters some 250 miles (400 kilometers) off the coast of Israel, and activists along with journalists and at least one lawmaker from Italy were transferred onto military boats and brought to a larger military vessel at the Ashdod port in southern Israel, where they were held in containers, according to their accounts. They told The Associated Press they were punched and kicked, as well as dragged and pulled by their hair.
Israel's far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has called for deporting political opponents and was barred from mandatory military service for his extreme views, sparked global outrage after promoting a video of himself taunting activists from a flotilla to Gaza who were detained by his police force. Foreign leaders have condemned his on-camera treatment of the detainees and several countries summoned Israeli envoys to air their concerns.
Israel denies mistreatment. The allegations were “false and entirely without factual basis,” said Zivan Freidin, a spokesperson for the Israeli Prison Service.
Some 420 activists departed for Turkey on Thursday after they were deported from Israel, many wearing gray sweatsuits and Arab kaffiyehs.
The AP spoke to some Thursday and Friday as they reached Istanbul, Athens and other European cities:
Here are their accounts:
He detailed being held in a container alongside other detainees shortly after the flotilla raid and he said some people were taken outside the containers where he heard them being physically assaulted.
“We faced periods where we couldn’t stand, our heads were bowed to the ground, we were dragged and pulled by our hair. The handcuffs left serious marks on us.”
After arriving at Ashdod port, Ozkan says he was denied the right to contact his lawyer, embassy officials or relatives back home. He describes being told to sign papers under duress, which he refused.
“When we refused to sign, they treated us like prisoners, creating a file, taking photos, forcibly handcuffing our hands and feet with iron shackles. And then, with the soldiers, dragged us along the ground, surrounded by dogs, releasing the dogs on us, before loading us into prison trucks.”
“When we got to Ashdod port, I was immediately grabbed by five IDF (soldiers) or police officers. They put my head down and started beating me. One of them had gloves on with hardened plastic and he started punching my face and it swelled shut,” he said, showing his black eye.
“During the crossing, we were put on our knees, blindfolded, and told to make sure the blindfold didn’t move. They repositioned mine 30 times because I kept trying to look around. And there’s absolutely no possibility in this situation to say ‘I’m a member of parliament’ or ‘I’m a journalist’ — you’re dealing with machines that scream and accompany their screaming with physical gestures. They put you flat on the ground, then on your knees, with zip ties on your wrists. The blindfold, plus an additional zip tie securing your wrists down to a metal structure, just a few inches from the deck. So you’re forced to travel in an extremely uncomfortable position on rough concrete. And I had cramps in my legs the whole time, obviously.”
After they were transferred to a ship that was used for detention “the treatment became immediately more violent. We entered through this small hatch and were shoved and dragged by force with our arms twisted behind our backs, forced to kneel in front of a wall with our heads down.”
At one point, he was thrown down “flat on my stomach, hands behind my back, face pressed, head pressed against the soaking wet and dirty floor of this ship — pressed down with their feet — and then they pressed my hands behind my back.”
Once inside the container, “I was kicked in the shin. Honestly, I don’t expect it. And they say ‘Welcome to Israel.’ Then a punch to the face, one from this side, one from that side. A closed-fist punch. I moved to get up and I got kicked in the leg. A little jolt from a taser to the ribs. And then I make it out the other side of this container and reach the deck.”
Mantovani said he was also strip searched, and his eye glasses and wallet discarded. He and the activists on his ship threw their cellphones into the sea when the Israeli boats approached, and he didn’t wear a watch on this mission after his was nearly confiscated on a previous flotilla.
“I was struck with a taser, beaten with punches and kicks, insulted and humiliated. On the prison ship there was a container that everyone had to pass through. You entered through one door and a group of six or seven people would beat you mercilessly until you emerged from the other side. Every single one of us went through that.”
Atmatzidis said he was being processed for identification when Ben-Gvir was touring the prison ship.
“The minister entered the room and asked me where I was from. I replied, ‘from Greece.’ He then asked why I was there, and I told him that I had come to deliver humanitarian aid to people who needed it. He responded, ‘Are you a friend of Hamas?’ I explained that our mission had no political agenda and was purely humanitarian. He was surrounded by four armed guards who aimed their weapons and laser sights at me while I sat there handcuffed behind my back.”
He added: "Whenever we told them that circulation was being cut off and our hands were going numb, they showed absolutely no mercy. I do not have the words to describe the brutality and cruelty of these people. It is something I will never forget.”
An activist from the Global Sumud Flotilla talks with the police upon his arrival at Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport in Athens, Greece, Friday, May 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)
An activist from the Global Sumud Flotilla kisses a woman upon his arrival at Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport in Athens, Greece, Friday, May 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)
Activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla disembark a plane upon arriving at Istanbul Airport, in Istanbul, Turkey, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)
Italian members of the Global Sumud Flotilla arrive at the Fiumicino Airport in Rome on Thursday, May 21, 2026, after they were released and deported by the Israeli government after attempting to reach Gaza. (Cecilia Fabiano/LaPresse via AP)
Activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla comfort each other upon their arrival at Istanbul Airport, in Istanbul, Turkey, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)
