A federal judge on Monday ordered ICE to release the six-member family of Mohamed Sabri Soliman, the Egyptian national facing 184 criminal charges for a firebomb attack in Boulder, Colorado, that killed an 82-year-old woman and injured eight others, from detention in Dilley, Texas, where they had been held since June 2025. The ruling, reported by Breitbart News, came from Obama-appointed Federal District Judge Fred Biery, who upheld an earlier decision by U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Chestney siding with the family in a habeas corpus petition.
The family, Soliman's 41-year-old wife, Hayam Salah Alsaid Ahmed El Gamal, two minor sons, and three minor daughters, had been detained for removal after Soliman's arrest. The Department of Homeland Security said Soliman entered the country on a valid visa during the Biden administration but overstayed it, violating the conditions of his admission. DHS said the family was granted entry until February 26, 2023. They never left.
Now a federal court says the government must let them go.
The FBI stated that witnesses saw Soliman attack a group with a makeshift flamethrower and an incendiary device while shouting "Free Palestine." Eight victims, four women and four men, were taken to Denver hospitals. One victim later died from injuries sustained in the attack.
That victim was Karen Diamond, 82 years old. Just The News reported that Soliman was charged with first-degree murder after Diamond's death. Authorities said Soliman had planned the June 1 Boulder attack for a year and allegedly targeted a pro-Israel demonstration using Molotov cocktails and a homemade flamethrower.
Soliman pleaded not guilty to more than 180 state and federal crimes related to the attack. Breitbart News reported in June 2025 that a manifesto found after the attack included Soliman declaring: "Allah is greater than anything. Allah is greater than the Zionists, Allah is greater than America and its weapons, Allah is greater than the F-35 planes, Allah is greater than everything else." He also wrote: "So why do we fear those who are inferior to Allah rather than fear Allah Himself?"
An accused terrorist who targeted elderly marchers at a pro-Israel solidarity walk, who allegedly spent a year planning the assault, whose own words drip with ideological hatred, and the courts are now ordering the release of his family from immigration custody. That is the state of play.
The legal battle over the Soliman family's detention has taken sharp turns. Shortly after ICE detained the family, the White House signaled that removal would be swift, posting on X: "Six One-Way Tickets for Mohamed's Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon."
But the family's attorney, Eric Lee, filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of El Gamal. Last week, Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Chestney ruled against ICE. On Monday, Judge Biery upheld that decision, ordering the family released. Lee posted on X after the ruling: "A federal court ordered the El Gamal family released today, holding their detention violated the constitution. They're still detained. Release the El Gamal family immediately!"
The case, however, has produced contradictory rulings from different judges, a pattern that has become increasingly common in federal courtrooms handling politically charged cases. In a separate proceeding, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia dismissed the family's legal challenge and cleared the way for deportation proceedings to move forward. Garcia found that the government had used ordinary removal proceedings, not expedited removal, which rendered the family's specific lawsuit moot.
Garcia wrote that the federal court "lacks jurisdiction to grant Petitioners the relief they seek." His order also noted that confusion over whether the family was being subjected to expedited removal "was incited by social media posts issued by the White House on June 3, 2025." In other words, the White House's own triumphant post may have muddied the legal waters.
The New York Post reported that Garcia's ruling reversed an earlier decision that had paused the family's removal proceedings, and that both Soliman's work authorization and tourist visas had expired. The family moved to the United States from Egypt in 2022.
The Department of Homeland Security has not treated this as a routine immigration matter. DHS said Soliman "was admitted during the Biden administration on a valid visa but failed to exit the United States and overstayed the visa violating the conditions of his admission." The family was detained for removal after Soliman's arrest.
Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, told the Washington Examiner: "We are investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it."
That statement carries weight. Soliman listed the six-member family as his dependents when he filed for asylum in Denver, Colorado. If DHS is actively investigating whether family members had foreknowledge of or provided support for a terror attack that killed an elderly woman, the decision to release them from custody raises obvious questions about public safety and flight risk.
The case echoes a broader frustration among Americans who watch federal courts intervene in immigration enforcement at precisely the moments when the stakes are highest. A man accused of a premeditated terror attack, who overstayed his visa, whose manifesto declared war on America and Zionists, and the judicial system's response is to order his wife and children freed from the facility where they were being held pending removal. In cases involving major federal court decisions, the outcomes often seem disconnected from the realities on the ground.
Several questions hang over this case. The docket number for the habeas corpus petition has not been publicly identified in available reporting. The specific court that issued Biery's order has not been named beyond his title as a federal district judge. The exact date in June 2025 when the family was first detained remains unclear.
More pressing: what happens next? Garcia's ruling appeared to clear the way for ordinary removal proceedings. Biery's ruling ordered release from detention. Whether the family will actually be deported, or whether they will disappear into the interior of the country, is the question no one in authority has answered plainly.
DHS's investigation into the family's possible knowledge of the attack also remains open. If that investigation produces evidence of complicity, the release order will look even worse in hindsight. If it produces nothing, the government will still face the reality that a family of visa overstays, tied directly to an accused terrorist, walked out of federal custody on a judge's order.
The victims of the Boulder attack, including the family of Karen Diamond, deserve better than a legal system that treats the relatives of an accused terrorist as sympathetic petitioners while an active investigation into their possible involvement continues. Across the country, courts continue to hand down rulings in violent crime cases that leave communities questioning whether justice is being served, from lengthy sentences for heinous offenders in Arkansas to the ongoing prosecution of suspects in shocking homicide cases in Atlanta. The common thread is a public hungry for accountability.
When the courts protect process over safety, and when judges treat immigration detention of a terror suspect's family as a constitutional emergency, ordinary Americans are left to wonder whose side the system is on. The answer, too often, is not theirs.
