The Trump administration detained the El Gamal family just hours after they returned home from 10 months of detention, lawyers say.
A United States federal court has blocked the administration of United States President Donald Trump from deporting a woman and her five children after they were released from immigration detention.
Hayam al Gamal and his five children, aged between five and 18, were detained for 10 months before their release earlier this week following a judge’s order. They were detained for the longest period of any known family during Trump’s second term in office,
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But according to their lawyer, just days after returning to their home in Colorado, immigration officials detained the family again on Saturday and sought to rapidly deport them.
“The Trump administration has abducted the El Gamal family in violation of a federal court order from the Western District of Texas, which on Thursday ordered them not to detain or remove the family from the United States,” said a statement from the family’s attorneys, shared by attorney Eric Lee.
“The effort to remove the El Gamal family is a violation of the federal court order and must be stopped immediately,” it said.
Lee said soon after that U.S. District Judge Fred Bieri, who had ordered the family’s early release on Thursday, had granted an emergency order on Saturday barring their removal.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
The Trump administration has repeatedly violated court orders barring it from deporting people from the US, and critics say it has disregarded legal barriers.
This comes amid a broader campaign to restrict legal and illegal immigration, particularly from non-Western countries.
Hayam El Gamal and her children were detained by the Trump administration after her ex-husband Mohammed Sabri Soliman attacked a group of people in Boulder, Colorado, as they gathered in support of Israeli detainees held by the Palestinian armed group Hamas in June 2025.
An 82-year-old woman later died from injuries sustained during the incident.
Soliman’s family condemned the attack and denied any knowledge that it was about to happen, with NBC News reporting that El Gamal divorced her husband shortly after his arrest.
An FBI agent also testified under oath that there was no evidence that the family, who has not been charged with any crime, knew about the father’s plan.
Their nearly year-long detention by the Trump administration has been described by the family’s lawyers and many lawmakers as an illegal and cruel attempt to punish the family for an act they did not commit.
Following Soliman’s arrest, the White House said in a post on Twitter that it would seek the immediate expulsion of the family, whose lawyers said they were in the process of applying for asylum after coming to the US on tourist visas from Egypt.
“Six one-way tickets for Mohammed’s wife and five children. Final boarding call coming soon,” the White House post said.
According to his lawyers, the family has experienced deteriorating health and he has been denied proper medical care while in detention. Earlier in April, El Gamal was hospitalized due to a medical emergency related to an untreated growth on his chest, he said.
Immigration rights groups have noted that long-term detention of children is generally illegal.
In a statement earlier this week, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, said the Trump administration’s intentions would be clear if it sought to detain the family again despite a judge’s order to release them.
“If, despite the judge’s recommendation, the Department of Homeland Security still objects to the release of an innocent woman and her five children, we know why,” Durbin said.
“It’s not because they pose a threat to the community or a flight risk. It’s because they are immigrants – Arab Muslim immigrants.”
