Federal immigration agents detained the family of accused Boulder firebomber Mohamed Soliman for a second time, hours after they returned home to Colorado and just days after a judge ordered their immediate release from an ICE facility in Texas.
The family's lawyers say ICE put Soliman's ex-wife, Hayam El Gamal, 18-year-old Habiba Soliman, and four minor children on a plane bound for Detroit's Willow Run Airport and then to an unknown location outside the United States. The Department of Homeland Security has not responded to requests for comment, CBS Colorado reported.
The sequence raises a pointed question that conservative voters have been asking for years: when the government finally acts with speed and force on immigration enforcement, why does it keep choosing cases that hand opponents a sympathy card, and that appear to defy a sitting federal judge?
Earlier in the week, a federal judge issued an order directing immigration officials to immediately release El Gamal, Habiba Soliman, and the four children. The family had been held at an ICE facility in Dilley, Texas. On Thursday afternoon, they walked out.
Their release came with conditions: electronic monitoring and periodic reporting to immigration authorities. By all available accounts, the family complied. After leaving Texas, they checked in at the East Caley Avenue ICE Facility in Centennial, Colorado, exactly as required.
Then, according to the family's attorney Niels Frenzen, ICE moved fast in the other direction.
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."
Kristin Gutzman, an advocate for the family, said the group that had driven them back from Texas learned less than an hour after the family was dropped off at the Centennial facility that they had been detained and deported.
Less than an hour. A family walks in to comply with a court-ordered check-in, and before the people who drove them there can get far down the road, the family is gone.
Mohamed Soliman faces dozens of charges, including first-degree murder and federal hate crime charges, for an attack on Boulder's Pearl Street Mall last June. He is accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at a group of people marching in support of Israeli hostages, killing one person and injuring many others.
The attack was horrific. No one disputes that. And the public's desire to see every thread of accountability pulled tight is entirely reasonable. Polling consistently shows that a majority of Americans support vigorous immigration enforcement, including deportation of those in the country illegally.
But the family's legal position is distinct from the suspect's. In a hearing ordered by a federal judge, an FBI agent testified in court that he believed the family did not know about Soliman's plans. That testimony is not the word of a defense lawyer or an activist. It came from a federal law enforcement agent, under oath, in a proceeding convened by a judge.
That distinction matters, not because immigration enforcement is wrong, but because the credibility of enforcement depends on whether the government follows its own rules. A federal judge reviewed the facts and ordered the family released. ICE complied for roughly forty-eight hours. Then it reversed course without, as far as the public record shows, any new legal basis.
Frenzen said the family's legal team responded by filing emergency motions in the Western District of Texas and the Fifth Circuit, along with a new petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the District of Colorado. The breadth of those filings suggests the attorneys believe the government may be forum-shopping or moving the family across jurisdictions to complicate legal challenges.
Frenzen described the children's ages: five, approximately six, sixteen, and eighteen. He also stated that El Gamal "has suffered health emergencies, and her life is in danger." Those claims have not been independently verified, and DHS has offered no public response.
The administration's silence is itself a problem. When ICE acts in apparent defiance of a court order, the public deserves an explanation, not a blank wall. Immigration enforcement and the courts have clashed repeatedly in recent years, and the government's legal footing matters every time.
Lacey Goodwin, one of the people who helped drive the family back from Texas, offered her own account:
"This family has done everything right that we have asked them to do, and they have been thrown around in the entire system. Listening to their stories of what it was like in the detention center was unbelievable; the targeting they were doing, even to the 5-year-old."
Goodwin's claims about conditions inside the Dilley facility are unverified. But her core point, that the family followed every instruction and still ended up re-detained, aligns with the known timeline.
Conservatives rightly demand strong borders and consistent enforcement. The case for deportation is strongest when the government follows its own procedures, respects court orders, and targets people whose removal serves a clear public-safety or legal purpose.
This case, at least on the facts available, does not fit that model cleanly. The family members are not the accused terrorist. An FBI agent said under oath they had no knowledge of the attack. A judge ordered them released. They complied with every condition. And then ICE swept them up again within hours, apparently heading for removal to an undisclosed country.
That sequence hands immigration opponents exactly the kind of case they want: children, a sick mother, compliance with the law, and a government that appears to have ignored a federal judge. It is the mirror image of the high-profile campus detention cases that have drawn national attention, situations where the optics of enforcement overshadow its substance.
On Saturday, April 25, 2026, protesters gathered in front of City Hall in Colorado Springs to call for the family's release. Those protests will only grow louder if DHS continues to stay silent.
The open questions are significant. What legal authority did ICE invoke to override the judge's order? Where is the family being sent? Did any new information emerge between Thursday's release and the re-detention? And why has DHS refused to explain itself publicly?
None of this excuses what Mohamed Soliman allegedly did on Pearl Street Mall. The attack was a savage act, and justice for the victims demands a full prosecution. But punishing a suspect's ex-wife and young children, after a court said they should go free, after an FBI agent said they were uninvolved, is not justice. It is the kind of overreach that undermines public trust in law enforcement at the very moment that trust is most needed.
Enforcement that ignores its own courts does not make the country safer. It makes the next fight harder.
