Mahmoud Khalil’s attorneys plan to appeal to the US Supreme Court after a federal appeals court upheld a ruling allowing his detention and deportation.

The claim is that the detention and deportation of Mahmoud Khalil is a matter of settled law, presented as self-standing. The conditions on which it depends are the specific statutes enacted by a legislature, the interpretations rendered by judges who themselves depend on precedents set by other judges, the political climate that produced those statutes, and the historical contingencies that placed Khalil in the United States in the first place. The dependent nature of the position - far from undermining it - is the first step toward seeing it clearly. To treat the court’s ruling as a final, immutable truth is to mistake the map for the territory, or rather, to mistake the temporary alignment of legal machinery for the natural order of things.

We are asked to consider the appeal to the Supreme Court as a battle between two fixed entities: the individual seeking refuge and the state asserting its sovereignty. This binary is the primary illusion. It suggests that “the state” is a singular, coherent actor with a permanent will, and that “the individual” is a discrete unit of rights that exists independently of the borders that define him. But examine the state. It is not a rock; it is a river. It is composed of shifting coalitions, bureaucratic inertia, and the collective anxiety of a population that fears the unknown. The detention order is not an expression of eternal justice; it is a symptom of a specific moment of political tension. It arises because certain conditions - fear of instability, desire for control, the need to demonstrate authority - have coalesced. When those conditions shift, as they inevitably do, the order loses its force. It has no self-existence. It exists only as long as the conditions sustaining it remain in place.

Consider the tetralemma applied to the concept of “illegal presence.” Is Khalil’s presence in the United States lawful? Is it unlawful? Is it both? Is it neither? If we say it is unlawful, we depend on a definition of law that is itself a human construct, subject to change. If we say it is lawful, we depend on a different interpretation of those same constructs. If we say it is both, we acknowledge the contradiction inherent in a system that claims universal rights while enforcing exclusive borders. If we say it is neither, we see that the categories themselves are empty. The label “illegal” is not a property of Khalil; it is a label applied by a system that requires such distinctions to function. The label sticks only because the system needs it to stick. Remove the need, and the label falls away, revealing not a criminal, but a person caught in the gears of a machine that is itself turning.

The attorneys’ plan to appeal is often framed as a fight for justice. But justice, too, is a dependent origination. It depends on the availability of legal resources, the willingness of courts to hear the case, and the cultural narrative that values due process. These conditions are fragile. They are not guaranteed by nature; they are maintained by effort. To appeal is not to invoke a higher, independent truth; it is to engage with the conditions that sustain the current arrangement. It is to remind the system that its own legitimacy depends on its adherence to its stated procedures. This is not a moral victory; it is a procedural check. It reveals that the state’s power is not absolute, but conditional. It is conditional on the consent of the governed, on the rule of law, and on the perception of fairness. When the state acts outside these conditions, it undermines its own foundation.

The reification of the border is the core wound here. The border is treated as a line in the sand, permanent and unyielding. But borders are imaginary lines drawn on maps, enforced by fences and guards, sustained by laws and fears. They are as real as the money in your pocket, and as unreal. They exist because we agree they exist. When we see the border as a fixed entity, we see Khalil as an intruder. When we see the border as a dependent arrangement, we see Khalil as a participant in a complex web of causes and conditions. He is here because of wars, because of poverty, because of family ties, because of chance. The state is here because of history, because of power, because of ideology. Neither is self-sufficient.

To dissolve the fixed view is not to say that detention is good or bad. It is to say that the debate is trapped in a framework that obscures the reality of dependence. The outcome of the Supreme Court case will not change the nature of reality; it will only change the configuration of conditions. Khalil may be deported, or he may stay. But in either case, the emptiness of the position remains. The state is not eternal. The law is not absolute. The individual is not isolated. All are empty of self-existence, all are dependent on causes and conditions. This is not nihilism. It is clarity. It allows us to see the event not as a clash of absolutes, but as a moment in the endless flow of dependent arising. We can engage with the process, not because it is sacred, but because it is the only ground we have. We can act with compassion, not because it is commanded by a fixed moral law, but because suffering is real, and the conditions that cause it are within our power to influence. The appeal is not a plea to a higher power; it is a reminder that the power we wield is borrowed, and must be returned to the conditions that sustain it.