More than 7 months after an antisemitic attack in Boulder, a family who says they knew nothing is still detained by ICE

By Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN

(CNN) — June 1 began as an ordinary day for Habiba Soliman: Her mother was doing some work in a cafe, her brother Omar was on an afternoon hike with friends, and she was babysitting her 8-year-old sister and 4-year-old twin siblings at home.

Then the teenager, 17 at the time, saw police cars swarm her neighborhood, she wrote in a statement.

Confusion grew as her father’s phone rang at home, even though he was supposed to be at work, Habiba wrote. When her mother, Hayam El Gamal, arrived home, she was escorted by authorities to the police station. According to her statement, Habiba and her brother Omar, alarmed by the seriousness of the situation, dug through local news headlines until they found one about their father and they couldn’t believe their eyes.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman had allegedly attacked demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado at a Jewish event supporting Israeli hostages in Gaza with a homemade flamethrower and Molotov cocktails, according to federal prosecutors. The attack wounded at least 29 people and an 82-year-old woman later died from her injuries.

He’s facing more than 100 charges related to the incident, including murder. Soliman pleaded not guilty to state charges, and his attorney asked for a jury trial slated to begin in the summer. He also pleaded not guilty to the federal hate crime charges.

The Egyptian man told detectives after he was arrested that “no one” knew about his attack plans and that “he never talked to his wife or family about it,” according to the affidavit for his arrest. El Gamal also said she and her children were unaware of his plans.

Despite that declaration, Soliman’s wife and children were detained and transferred to the South Texas Family Residential Center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Dilley, Texas. El Gamal previously said immigration officers told them they were “being punished” with detainment for the crimes of which her husband is accused.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN last week the agency is “investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it,” echoing the same message DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said shortly after the June attack.

Now, the family, including four minors, is fighting a difficult and complex battle both in immigration court and inside the detention center.

In a phone interview with CNN from the facility, the family described what they call grim conditions: despondent children, denial of critical medical care, and inadequate nutrition – concerns also raised by other families at the Dilley center.

The center is the same facility where a 5-year-old boy, who was taken by federal agents from the driveway of his metro Minneapolis home last week after returning from preschool, is being held with his father, according to school district officials and a family attorney.

“We are fighting because we know we are innocent,” Habiba wrote in her statement from detention, adding, “We pray for someone to look at us not as the family of a man who is accused of terrorism, but as humans who deserve to live freely.”

She told CNN while in detention she lived in fear of being separated from the rest of her family.

“My mom is literally crying every night, just praying that I don’t get separated. We are scared every day that this would happen,” Habiba said.

If her eldest daughter was to be separated, El Gamal said, “I feel like I will die.”

On Saturday, 12 days after the family spoke with CNN, Habiba was separated from her family inside the Dilley center, the family’s attorney told CNN.

A DHS spokesperson said Habiba was transferred to the adult section of the facility after she turned 18 “in strict accordance with ICE policy, which requires that individuals over 18 are no longer classified as minors.”

Habiba turned 18 four days after she was first detained and was separated from her family more than seven months after she became an adult, according to a copy of her birth certificate reviewed by CNN.

CNN has reached out to DHS for clarification about the timing of the move.

“You’re not a human anymore”

When Habiba saw video from the June attack, she said while the person in it looked like her father, she “couldn’t believe that this was the person I knew,” she wrote.

“What happened to the victims is awful, and nobody should ever go through what they have been through,” she told CNN. “We have been paying for something that we didn’t do anything, didn’t know anything about for seven months.”

She denounced her father’s actions in her public statement, writing, “Violence is never justified. And we condemn every one (sic) that uses violence including my father.”

Now, the family says their days inside the walls of the facility are defined by waiting in hours-long lines for ordinary resources: A line for the shower, a line for the phone, a line for the computer, food, and medical aid.

While detained, each of the children has marked a birthday. They include two girls, 9 and 18, a 16-year-old boy and fraternal twins, now 5.

Birthdays before detention were a call for celebration. This year, they were just another day they spent being held for a crime they say they had no knowledge of or involvement in.

“This place is horrendous. I can’t even say in words how bad it is,” Omar, the 16-year-old, told CNN. “You cannot imagine how bad it is for five-year-olds to be trapped in a room that’s five by eight for the entire day.”

Meals inside the detention center are usually cold or spoiled, the eldest daughter said, and her siblings often cry over the quality of the meals, which consist of mostly processed, frozen foods.

Other detained families have reported mold in the food, which resulted in children becoming ill – something Habiba said she’s witnessed herself.

“You’re basically like an animal,” the 18-year-old said. “You’re not a human anymore.”

The DHS spokesperson told CNN the facility “fully meets federal detention standards and actually undergoes regular audits and inspections.”

“The Dilley Detention Center is retrofitted for families. Adults with children are housed in facilities that provide for their safety, security, and medical needs. All detainees are provided with 3 meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries. Inmates also have access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement.

A complex legal battle

The exact reason for the detention of El Gamal and her children is unclear to both the family and their attorney, Eric Lee. Neither El Gamal nor her children have been charged with a crime, he said.

DHS’ McLaughlin, however, said last week Soliman’s “wife and their children are in our country illegally and are rightfully in ICE custody” and “will remain in custody pending removal proceedings.”

The family entered the United States together in August 2022 as non-immigrant visitors and filed for asylum a month later, according to DHS, before overstaying their visas. Immigrants applying for asylum must already be physically present in the US.

But their visa expiration is not why they were detained, Lee said. And their legal battle for release has been complicated.

“The issue here is whether they can be detained when the government has explicitly stated that its reason for detaining them is not because (of) their visa overstays, but is because of their family relationship to their husband/father,” Lee said previously.

Two days after the attack, the White House’s official X account posted that Mohamed Soliman’s wife and family “have been captured and are now in ICE custody for expedited removal.”

But federal law says only immigrants who have been in the US for fewer than two years are subject to expedited removal – the family had been in the country for nearly three – and the government conceded they weren’t eligible for expedited removal, saying instead they were in conventional removal proceedings, according to court documents.

Another federal law states the family of an immigrant engaged in terrorist activity is ineligible to enter the US, but there are exceptions for family members who either didn’t or shouldn’t have reasonably known about the terroristic activity, or have renounced it. An immigration judge found El Gamal and her children had met those exceptions, didn’t pose a danger or flight risk, and granted them bond in September.

Their legal win was short-lived: DHS has the broad unilateral power to pause an immigration judge’s bond order from taking effect, and the agency quickly exercised that power, keeping the family in ICE detainment.

A Texas district court judge eventually vacated DHS’s pause on the bond order in November, but 10 days later, the Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration laws, remanded the immigration judge’s initial bond grant and ordered him to issue a new decision. Last week, he denied the family bond, saying El Gamal and her children are flight risks.

The family’s first asylum request was denied when Mohamed Soliman carried out the June attack, Lee said. The family submitted a second asylum application without him, but it was deemed incomplete by an immigration judge, who dismissed their case on December 29 and ordered them removed to Egypt, court documents show.

In her denial, the judge included several examples of how the application was incomplete. The first question asks, in part, whether the family is part of a religious organization: El Gamal wrote that she and her children are Muslim, and observe and participate in the religious traditions including attending a Mosque and observing holidays. The judge said the answer was incomplete because El Gamal failed to specifically answer her family’s levels of participation, leadership positions held, or the length of time the family was involved in the religion.

The judge who dismissed the family’s asylum case has a 95.3% asylum denial rate, according to a federal immigration database by Syracuse University.

“It’s just a lot of prejudging without knowing anything,” Habiba said. “I just think it’s so unfair for other people to judge us without knowing what we have been through.”

Lights that never turn off and night terrors

Since coming to the US, El Gamal and her children have tried to do everything right, she said: learn English, find work, pour into education and be good neighbors.

“I put all my effort to raising my kids,” the mother said.

The six family members are packed inside one room defined by bunk beds under bright lights that never turn off, Habiba detailed.

“Our brains are literally exploding,” she said. “(We) just want to shut down for a bit.”

As for her twin siblings, who have been playing with the same two toys for months, she said their thoughts don’t revolve around games or cartoons, but something far more basic: “They’re literally dreaming about eating bananas.”

But with their dreams, night terrors follow.

“They just wake up every night in the middle of the night, they’re screaming, crying for absolutely no reason,” she said of the younger siblings, who have now spent one fifth of their lives in ICE detention.

Meanwhile, Omar, the 16-year-old, said the twins aren’t the only ones struggling to get rest.

“I haven’t seen the dark in seven months,” he said.

The lights are a complaint ICE said they addressed by changing the bulbs to “soft white” ones, though they remain on overnight, a December agency report said.

And while the bright lights make it hard to forget where they are, Habiba said she’s been able to find pockets of peace through books she finds around the facility or an uplifting email from one of her teachers.

“It’s just all small little things,” she said, even if they are far and few between.

“My entire life is waiting for me to get out”

There was only one thing that held Mohamed Soliman back from attacking sooner than June 1, he told federal authorities: Waiting for Habiba to graduate high school.

The father told authorities he planned the attack for a full year. Meanwhile, Omar said, he spent that year at boarding school in Michigan. He was in town when the attack happened only for his sister’s graduation – the last joyous occasion the family shared together.

“All of my stuff, everything, all of my property, all my clothes, everything from socks, underwear, everything is literally still in Michigan,” he said. “My entire life is waiting for me to get out.”

As a large family, the Soliman siblings are used to sharing spaces, but Habiba said the bathrooms inside the detention center are crowded and messy; her siblings cry and refuse to take showers.

“Can you imagine at least 60 or 50 people that are using the same bathroom and the same showers, how it will be?” she said, adding they are constantly littered with trash.

During the summer, Omar said he experienced excruciating pain from appendicitis and despite asking for medical attention, he was denied care for three days before he finally was sent to the hospital for surgery.

Hours after surgery, he returned to the facility, where he said he waited in an hours-long line to get antibiotics for infection prevention.

DHS said immigrants at the Dilley center are given “prompt and appropriate medical attention whenever requested including medications.”

A life outside detention worth fighting for

A day spent waiting for the next meal or a dose of medicine leaves ample room for conversation – the family has found friends in a place that doesn’t leave much hope, Habiba said, adding she’s experienced second-hand heartbreak hearing other detainee stories of hardship and loss.

If anything, she said, it has further solidified her dream of practicing medicine and helping others.

“Everyone is so happy for the people that get to get out, even if they’re deported,” she explained.

In a comment to CNN about the Soliman family’s detention, DHS said the Trump administration has given immigrant parents “a chance to take full control of their departure and self-deport.”

But self-deportation isn’t an option the family has been presented with, Habiba said. Even if it was, she said there are safety reasons for why her family sought asylum in the US.

CNN has reached out to DHS for clarification about the family’s eligibility for self-deportation.

For months, the family said it has agreed to requests for interviews with authorities, insisting each time that none of them had any knowledge of their father and husband’s plans or were involved in any way.

And yet, “it’s never enough,” Omar said.

Before their recent bond denial, a group of southern Colorado community organizers, former teachers of the children, and friends of the family advocated for their release, asking that they not continue to be punished for Soliman’s alleged crimes.

Elizabeth Reinhold previously worked with Habiba, Omar and their 9-year-old sister as they acclimated to American life at school. Reinhold described the children as bright and ambitious, telling CNN they are “one of the most consistently intelligent families” she’s ever worked with as a teacher.

Reinhold routinely met with the whole family to talk about the children’s progress in school, she said, and knew them to be animated, passionate, and dedicated to academic success. She even attended Habiba’s high school graduation, sharing in the family’s collective excitement, just days before the antisemitic attack.

When she heard about the incident, she was overwhelmed with shock, grief, and horror, she said.

“I cried hardest for Habiba because she was so excited to go on to this next phase of life,” Reinhold said. “My primary emotion was anger, specifically because I knew that this was going to potentially destroy Habiba’s chances of going to college or being able to stay in America potentially.”

Reinhold has sent Habiba emails of support while in detention and said there are a handful of community members waiting for them on the other side, ready to help them financially, socially and emotionally.

“I don’t know when or how our detention will end,” Habiba wrote in her public statement. “I don’t know if it’s a happy or a sad ending. I don’t know how we will deal with the effects that this place imposed on us. I don’t know how the victims can recover from what happened to them.”

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