The wife of an Egyptian man accused of carrying out anantisemitic attackin Colorado earlier this month says she was in “total shock” when she learned what her husband had allegedly done, detailing the “grieving and suffering” her family is enduring in after federal custody, ina statement released Wednesday.
Hayam El Gamal, 43, and her five children were detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement two days after federal prosecutors say her husband,Mohamed Sabry Soliman, drove to downtown Boulder with a homemade flamethrower and Molotov cocktails and attacked demonstrators at a peaceful event to support Israeli hostages in Gaza, injuring at least 12 people.
For a full year, Soliman, 45, planned the violent assault driven by his simmering anger toward Israel and hatred of “Zionists,” according to federal documents.
But El Gamal says she and the children were not aware of Soliman’s plan to hurt innocent people.
“Why punish any of us, who did nothing wrong?” El Gamal said in the statement. “We are treated like animals by the officers, who told us we are being punished for what my husband is accused of doing.”
On June 3, El Gamal says she and her children were arrested, put on a flight in the middle of the night and transferred from Colorado to the Dilley Family Detention Center in southern Texas.
In the two weeks that have passed, El Gamal said her eldest daughter turned 18 in federal custody and her younger children – aged 4, 4, 7 and 15 – were “forced to watch officials rough-up” another detainee.
“They cried and cried, thinking they would be roughed-up, too,” El Gamal said. “How much longer will we be here for something we didn’t do?”
Conditions in the detention center are inhumane, according to El Gamal, who says detainees are always being watched and woken up in the middle of the night.
CNN has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment on conditions at the detention center following a referral from ICE and the facility’s owner, CoreCivic, a private prison operator based in Nashville.
“Now my seven-year-old is about to have her birthday in jail, and my fifteen-year-old, too,” El Gamal added. “All they want is to be home, to be in school, to have privacy, to sleep in their own beds, to have their mother make them a home-cooked meal, to help them grieve and get through these terrible weeks.”
The exact reason for the detention of Soliman’s wife and children is not clear, according to Eric Lee, the family’s immigration attorney based in Michigan.
The family entered the United States in August 2022, Lee told CNN Wednesday, before overstaying their visas. However,that’s not why they were detained, he said.
“The issue here is whether they can be detained when the government has explicitly stated that its reason for detaining them is not because their visa overstays, but is because of their family relationship to their husband/father,” Lee told CNN Wednesday.
Once detained, El Gamal and the children were placed under expedited removal, a process that allows immigration officials to remove noncitizens without a hearing before an immigration judge, Lee says.
At the time of their detention, DHS did not provide additional details on the expedited removal process.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem hassaidthe 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.”
El Gamal has not been charged with a crime, according to Lee,who notes thereis no legal basis for deporting Soliman’s family.
“The government can’t detain individuals for unlawful purposes,” Lee added.
While Soliman faces a federalhate crime chargeand state charges including attempted murder, his wife and children are hoping to remain in the US, Lee says.
On Wednesday, a US District court approved a request to extend a temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge on June 4 that aims to keep El Gamal and her children in the US and prevents immigration officials “from trying to deport this family illegally,” Lee told CNN. The order has been extended for an additional 14 days.
The Trump administration opposed the extension request,stating that the family is not being placed under expedited removal, according to Lee.
”We don’t understand if the government’s being forthright about its statement that it is not anymore trying to put them into expedited removal,” Lee said. “Why are they opposing the extension of an order which would prevent the administration from doing just that?”
Since coming to the US, El Gamal says she and her family have tried to do everything right: learn English, find work, be good neighbors.
“All I want is to give my children good lives. My oldest daughter volunteered at a hospital; she has a 4.5 GPA and wants to become a doctor, to help people in this country,” El Gamal said.
She and the children should be given the chance to grieve in peace, Lee added.
“That doesn’t take anything away from the families of the people who are attacked in this terrible act,” he added. “But, creating more suffering doesn’t help anybody in this situation.”