A federal judge on Thursday ordered immigration officials to release the family of Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, who is accused of attacking a group of people demonstrating in support of the release of Israeli hostages in June 2025. File Photo Courtesy of Boulder Police Department/UPI | License Photo
A federal judge has ordered federal immigration officials to immediately release the family of the man accused of killing one person and injuring 13 others at a Colorado demonstration in support of Israeli hostages last June.
Hayam El Gamal and her five children were detained by federal immigration agents on June 3, two days after her husband, Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, allegedly attacked people attending a weekly Boulder, Colo., event with a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails.
In announcing their detention, then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said they would be deported if they had any knowledge of the attack. The White House followed by stating, “Six one-way Tickets for Mohamed’s Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding call coming soon.”
What followed was protracted litigation, led by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, to prevent their removal.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery of the Western District of Texas accepted a recommendation from a magistrate judge issued Monday, ordering the family to be released while their deportation case proceeds.
El Gamal and her eldest child, 18-year-old Habiba Soliman, will be required to wear ankle monitors, according to the order, and all are to comply with “reasonable reporting requirements to the immigration authorities.”
The order of their release comes on the recommendation of U.S. Magistrate Elizabeth “Betsy” Chestney, who reviewed their habeas corpus petition and found that they were being detained in violation of their due process rights.
“It is unquestionable that petitioners have been targeted by the government due too their connection to an individual allegedly responsible for a terrorist act despite the fact that there has never been any evidentiary finding that [El Gamal and her children] themselves were affiliated with that act or even had knowledge of its occurrence,” Chestney wrote in her recommendation, Politico reported.
Soliman has been charged with 12 federal hate crime counts. In the state of Colorado, he is facing two first-degree murder charges, 52 attempted first-degree murder charges and dozens of other counts related to the attack.
