The Trump administration notched a decisive victory Thursday morning after the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a federal district judge in New Jersey had no authority to order the release of pro-Hamas agitator Mahmoud Khalil.

Khalil, an Algerian national, was slated for deportation in March after failing to disclose extremist views and associations on his green card application. What should have been a routine immigration enforcement action instead metastasized into a nearly year-long legal circus, ricocheting through multiple courts as activists and sympathetic judges worked to delay the inevitable.

In June, Michael Farbiarz, a judge appointed by Joe Biden, ordered Khalil’s release, asserting—without authority—that revoking his green card and proceeding with deportation would likely be deemed unconstitutional. The ruling followed Farbiarz’s decision to entertain a habeas corpus petition filed by Khalil and his legal team, a move critics argue stretched judicial power well beyond its limits.

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals slapped that down, however. In a 2–1 decision, the panel made clear that Farbiarz never had jurisdiction to hear the case in the first place, underscoring that Khalil must pursue any challenge through the federal immigration court system—not sympathetic district judges eager to intervene in routine enforcement actions:

A federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that a judge had no jurisdiction to order the release of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil from immigration detention, delivering President Trump’s administration a victory in its efforts to deport the pro-Palestinian activist.

The 2-1 ruling by a panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals opened the door to Khalil being re-arrested after it ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit he filed challenging his initial detention.

That holding came from US Circuit Judges Thomas Hardiman and Stephanos Bibas, both of whom were appointed by Republican presidents, who said that under the Immigration and Nationality Act, his claims needed to be instead heard through an appeal of a final order of removal from an immigration judge.

In other words, immigrants don’t get to sidestep the court system specifically created to handle immigration disputes. Khalil’s legal team didn’t file in New Jersey by accident—it was a transparent attempt at forum shopping, aimed at landing before a left-leaning judge willing to deliver a favorable ruling regardless of jurisdiction.

So what happens next? With the release order now vacated, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is likely free to re-detain Khalil. His attorneys, for their part, are already vowing to appeal, almost certainly by first seeking an en banc rehearing. But with the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals holding a majority conservative bench, the odds of reversing the panel’s decision appear slim.

Still, the episode is deeply frustrating—not because of anything the 3rd Circuit did, but because a district court judge was able to flout the law and stall a straightforward case for more than six months without ever having jurisdiction to begin with. Yes, this is “how the system works,” but it increasingly seems that a subset of lower-court judges is willing to abuse judicial power to achieve preferred political outcomes.

There may be no easy fix, but to the average citizen, the whole affair looks less like justice and more like judicial sabotage.