Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained the family of accused Boulder firebomber Mohamed Soliman just hours after they arrived home in Colorado, days after a federal judge ordered their immediate release and found their continued detention unconstitutional, CBS Colorado reported.
The family, Soliman's ex-wife Hayam El Gamal, 18-year-old Habiba Soliman, and four minor children, had been freed from an ICE facility in Dilley, Texas, on Thursday afternoon. They then checked in at the East Caley Avenue ICE Facility in Centennial, as required by the conditions of their release. That check-in turned into a fresh arrest.
Their attorney, Niels Frenzen, said ICE put the entire family on a plane bound for Detroit's Willow Run Airport and then to an unknown destination outside the United States. The children, he said, are five, nine, sixteen, and eighteen years old.
Mohamed Soliman faces dozens of charges in connection with an attack on Boulder's Pearl Street Mall last June. Prosecutors say he threw Molotov cocktails at a group of people marching in support of Israeli hostages. One person was killed and many others were injured. Newsmax reported that the victim was an 82-year-old woman, and that thirteen people suffered physical injuries.
The FBI has said Soliman admitted planning the attack for a year. He allegedly used Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower, and Just The News reported that he shouted "free Palestine" during the assault on the vigil for Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Immigration officials arrested the family shortly after the attack. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said at the time that federal authorities were investigating whether any of Soliman's relatives had prior knowledge of or provided support for the firebombing. All of the family's visas were revoked, and they were processed for expedited removal, Fox News reported, citing federal sources and a senior State Department official.
The family, all Egyptian citizens, entered the United States in August 2022 and were later listed as dependents on Soliman's asylum application, Breitbart reported. They had been detained in the Dilley, Texas, facility for roughly ten months by the time a judge intervened.
Earlier this week, a federal judge issued an order directing immigration officials to immediately release El Gamal, Habiba Soliman, and the four younger children. The judge found that their continued detention violated the Constitution. The terms of release included electronic monitoring and periodic reporting to immigration authorities.
The family complied. They left Texas on Thursday afternoon. They checked in at the Centennial ICE facility as instructed. And then, their lawyers say, ICE detained them again.
Frenzen described what happened next in stark terms:
"The family arrived home in Colorado this morning. Hours later, ICE arrested them all and has put them on a plane headed for Detroit's Willow Run Airport, and then outside the United States to an unknown location."
He added that El Gamal has suffered health emergencies and that her life is in danger. Counsel for the family filed emergency motions in the Western District of Texas and the Fifth Circuit, as well as a new petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the District of Colorado.
The tension between federal judges ordering releases and ICE moving to enforce immigration law is not new. In a separate case on Long Island, ICE detained an illegal immigrant accused of kidnapping a four-year-old girl after a judge released him without bail, a pattern that raises the same question of who has the final say over custody of foreign nationals facing removal.
DHS has not been shy about its rationale for detaining the family in the first place. Noem said on the day of the original detention that the agency was examining whether any family member knew about the attack beforehand or helped facilitate it.
DHS acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis reinforced that position even after the judge's release order. "The facts of this case have not changed: Mohamed Soliman is a terrorist responsible for an anti-Semitic firebombing in Boulder," Bis said.
The administration has won several recent legal battles over its authority to hold and remove foreign nationals. The Eighth Circuit handed the administration a major win on ICE mandatory detention, reinforcing the legal framework that gives federal immigration authorities broad discretion over who stays and who goes.
In a hearing ordered by a federal judge, an FBI agent testified that he believed the family did not know about Soliman's plans. That testimony formed part of the basis for the judge's release order. But DHS has not publicly stated whether its own investigation reached the same conclusion, or a different one.
CBS Colorado said it reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment and had not received a response as of the time of publication.
The family's attorneys framed the re-detention as a direct violation of a federal court order. Frenzen called it a "kidnapping." Attorney Eric Lee, in a statement reported by Breitbart, said the government "continues to keep them locked up" despite a ruling that their detention violated the Constitution.
The White House, for its part, appeared to celebrate the family's removal. A post on X attributed to the White House read: "Six One-Way Tickets for Mohamed's Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon."
This kind of collision between judicial orders and executive enforcement is becoming a recurring feature of immigration law. Recent appeals court rulings have generally favored the administration's position on detention authority, but individual district judges continue to issue release orders that test the boundaries of executive power.
The National Review noted that Soliman was in the country after overstaying a tourist visa, a detail that underscores the immigration dimension of the entire case. His family members were dependents on his asylum application, meaning their legal status was tied directly to a man now charged with murder and terrorism-related offenses.
Some legal commentators have questioned whether courts should intervene at all in cases where the executive branch is exercising its core immigration enforcement powers. That debate has only intensified as judges and the administration clash over emergency orders and the limits of judicial authority in immigration matters.
Several questions hang over this case. DHS has not publicly explained why it re-detained the family immediately after they complied with the judge's release conditions. The agency has not said whether its complicity investigation produced any findings. And the family's ultimate destination, Frenzen said they were headed "outside the United States to an unknown location", remains unclear.
The emergency motions filed in the Western District of Texas, the Fifth Circuit, and the District of Colorado will likely force a rapid judicial response. Whether those courts side with the family's lawyers or defer to ICE's enforcement authority could set a significant precedent.
DHS had previously been ordered not to deport the family, and a judge blocked that deportation order. Now ICE appears to have moved to remove them anyway, within hours of their release.
The revocation of visas and family-wide detention is a tool the administration has used in other high-profile cases involving foreign nationals with ties to terrorism or hostile actors. The Soliman case fits squarely in that pattern.
Here is what we know for certain: a man accused of an anti-Semitic firebombing that killed an elderly woman entered this country on a tourist visa and overstayed. His family members, dependents on his asylum claim, were detained as part of a federal investigation into whether they aided the attack. A judge ordered them released. ICE re-detained them the same day.
The family's lawyers call it unconstitutional. The government calls Soliman a terrorist. Somewhere between those two positions, the law will have to draw a line. But the American public can be forgiven for wondering why a federal judge's first instinct was to put the family of an accused terrorist back on the street, and why ICE had to step in to correct the call.
