The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Thursday reversed a district court’s decision that released Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil from immigration detention.

The court held that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) stripped the US District for the District of New Jersey of subject-matter jurisdiction because the INA requires deportation challenges be made by filing a petition for review of a final order of removal with a federal appeals court, not a district court. 

The Third Circuit held that the statute serves to provide “one bite at the apple” and that Khalil needed to first exhaust his direct appeal before seeking habeas relief. The court stated:

Each of the legal questions Khalil raises in his petition can be decided later, on a [petition for review]. He challenges a broad array of alleged governmental misconduct under the First and Fifth Amendments, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)… [A]ddressing any of those claims would require deciding whether removing Khalil would be unlawful—the very issue decided through the [petition for review] process. To be sure, the immigration judge’s order of removal is not yet final; the Board has not affirmed her ruling and has held the parties’ briefing deadlines in abeyance pending this opinion. But if the Board ultimately affirms, Khalil can get meaningful review.

In other words, because Khalil is raising legal questions that a petition-for-review court can meaningfully review later on, the INA bars him from attacking his removal and detention in a habeas petition. The court ultimately did not decide any of the key constitutional or statutory issues presented in Khalil’s case, specifically whether his removal over campus activism would be unconstitutional.

Mahmoud Khalil, a Syria-born Palestinian US permanent resident and activist, has been targeted by Donald Trump’s administration for his alleged affiliations with Hamas and anti-semitism. One district court held that the law used to deport Khalil is likely unconstitutionally vague. Other district courts have deemed the deportation of pro-Palestinian protestors as violative of the First Amendment.

The ACLU said that the Trump administration cannot lawfully detain Khalil again until the Third Circuit’s order takes formal effect, which won’t happen while he can still immediately appeal.