COLORADO SPRINGS
An Egyptian mother and her five children have spent more than nine months detained at the nation’s only family immigration detention center — believed to be the longest-held family there during Donald Trump’s second presidential term — prompting calls from Colorado Springs’ teachers, classmates and community members for their release.
The family’s life in Colorado abruptly unraveled last June, after the father, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was charged with attacking peaceful demonstrators in Boulder by hurling Molotov cocktails at the group supporting Israeli hostages. Prosecutors say at least 29 people were wounded and an 82-year-old woman later died from her injuries.
Soliman remains in federal custody, awaiting trial on more than 100 charges in the attack.
His wife, Hayam El Gamal, and her five kids, ages 5 to 18, have repeatedly said they had no knowledge of the attack. The FBI has also said investigators found no evidence they were involved. Still, El Gamal and her children remain imprisoned at Dilley Immigration Processing Center far beyond what immigration lawyers say is generally permitted under a decades-old federal settlement that limits how long parents and children can be held together in immigration detention.
Handwritten notes and letters from the children offer a window into life inside the south Texas facility. In a 59-page document, that was submitted last week to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the family describes what they call abysmal medical care, indifference toward their religious practices as Muslims and meals that are often inedible.
A letter written by Hayam El Gamal’s oldest daughter, Habiba, from inside Dilley Immigration Processing Center. She calls the Boulder attack “an awful and unforgivable act” that her mother and siblings “had absolutely no part in.” On the right, El Gamal’s 9-year-old daughter depicts her family, waiting to be released. (Courtesy of Eric Lee)
“In one minute our entire lives were changed and our plans and dreams were destroyed,” wrote 18-year-old daughter Habiba El Gamal.
“To authorities, we are guilty only by association. They don’t see us as individuals with our own dreams,” she wrote. “We are six innocent people, including five year old twins, trapped in a nightmare we didn’t create.”
The family’s written accounts come as a local group of Christian mothers in Colorado Springs organized three demonstrations, drawing dozens of families to the steps of City Hall last week. On Thursday, parents pushing strollers marched alongside school-aged children and other community members holding colorful signs calling for the family’s release and an end to family detention.
“I have seen with my own eyes, food that has mold in it. I even saw food with actual worms,” the 16-year-old boy wrote, adding that he has lost 20 pounds while detained at the facility.
One of the 5-year-old twins says they want to go to school and that they miss their bear.
“All of my friends left. I miss all of them. Why can’t we be released like them,” their 9-year-old sister wrote.
The children’s mental state is deteriorating from the prolonged detention, said Eric Lee, one of the family’s attorneys, who speaks to them on a daily basis.
“This case is so, so important and not only for their standpoint, but from a legal perspective,” Lee told The Colorado Sun. “You’re not supposed to be jailed in this country for the crimes that your relatives commit and that’s what the Trump administration has done with these children. It’s an abysmal set of circumstances that this family’s had to go through.”
A spokesperson for DHS, who did not give their name, responded by email to a list of questions from The Colorado Sun, saying that the agency continues to investigate “to what extent” the family “knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it.”
The spokesperson said the family will remain in custody “pending removal proceedings.”
Calling the family’s allegations “categorically false,” the spokesperson defended the treatment of the family at the detention center and said children have access to teachers, classrooms and curriculum booklets for math, reading and spelling, all of which is “generously funded by the U.S. taxpayer.”
“All detainees are provided with 3 meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries. Illegal aliens also have access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers. Certified dieticians evaluate meals,” the spokesperson said.
More than 900 miles away in downtown Colorado Springs, those who know the family described the children as polite and promising students — who were excelling in school and building a life in their new community, after arriving in 2022.
To Erika Watts, whose kids played with two of the El Gamal children on their high school soccer and basketball teams, the family was trustworthy, honest and a “key part of the community.”
“You could count on them,” Watts said. “They really had a spirit of perseverance even when discouraged. In sports you can see that a lot because things don’t always go your way.”
Habiba, though not the strongest player on the court, was known for being the first person to help a player who fell down, whether a teammate or the opposing team, and encouraging everyone to do their best or keep trying, she said.
“They were a key part of our community and really had an impact and relationships with a lot of other students. … It wasn’t just that they were hiding in the shadows. We saw that and acknowledged that and that is part of the reason we are advocating for them,” Watts said.
“They have qualities of character that are commendable and worth fighting for.”
“I feel helpless and frustrated”
The family’s letters detail inadequate medical care during the nine months they have been detained inside Dilley.
The 16-year-old boy, who was suffering from appendicitis, said he had abdominal pain that was so severe, he could not walk to the medical unit. When he was brought in a wheelchair to the unit, a nurse told him, “I can’t help you. Go and come back if you still have pain in 3 days,” he wrote.
He was sent to the waiting room, where he said he fell to his hands and knees and threw up.
“It was only then that I was taken seriously and transferred to a nearby ER,” the boy wrote.
Hayam El Gamal’s 16-year-old son describes when he was suffering from appendicitis while detained inside Dilley.. The pain was so severe, he could not walk, but a nurse told him, “I can’t help you. Go and come back if you still have pain in 3 days.” (Courtesy of Eric Lee)
“This prolonged detention has and continues to destroy our lives. It is slowly killing us on the inside,” he added. “Our lives are without purpose. We are just waiting for this nightmare to end.”
In the mother’s letter, she said she has complained to staff about spots appearing on her body that a doctor believed were stress related. She was prescribed a temporary treatment until she could be referred to a dermatologist, but the treatment was delayed by two weeks because the medication was unavailable. The facility’s medical staff wrote in her medical file that she refused treatment, she said.
After discovering a painful “weird bump” below her rib cage, she asked to see a provider, explaining to staff that her family has a history of cancer. Though a provider ordered an X-ray, she was denied the scan and given painkillers.
“I feel helpless and frustrated, taking steroids for my pain, without knowing what is truly wrong with my body,” she wrote.
Her 5-year-old daughter was also in need of dental care, she said. Before the family was detained, the youngest girl was scheduled for surgery to treat 13 cavities. In Dilley, she has been denied treatment and her pain continues to get worse, her mother wrote.
“The dentist only prescribed ibuprofen,” the mother wrote. “I told him I was scared the cavities would require root canals if left untreated but he said he would try to treat them at the facility, even though the facility has no means to treat children’s dental pain.”
The anonymous DHS spokesperson said the mother was booked the first available appointment for her skin concerns. They also claimed the facility could not provide her children with dental care because El Gamal insisted “her child be sedated while having their cavities filled.” Calling it a “rare request,” the spokesperson said DHS does not have the “capabilities to sedate patients on site, and an off-site referral has been placed.”
In January, an immigration judge said he was denying the family’s release because the family posed a significant flight risk, citing their lack of property and assets in the U.S., lack of family ties and their length of time in the U.S., court documents show.
But the El Gamal family has a large support system in Colorado Springs that has raised nearly $95,000 through an online fundraising campaign and a family that has offered to house them as their legal case proceeds.
“In this country, you’re not supposed to jail a 4-year-old or a 5-year-old because they don’t have enough money,” their lawyer said.
Lee added that the family came to the U.S. in 2022 on a tourist visa, which federal officials say expired, making their residence in the U.S. illegal. But Lee said before the visa expired, the family applied for asylum in September that year.
Their claim for asylum is strong, he says, based on the government calling the family terrorists, the father’s support of one of Egypt’s former presidents and the family’s decision to assist the FBI in investigating the father.
The mother said in her letter that she met her husband in Egypt through an arranged marriage when she was 22. She described her husband as closed off and considered a divorce, but decided to stay together for their children and the cultural stigma of a separation.
Among the “best and brightest”
Habiba arrived at her high school as a sophomore and worked hard to build friendships and become part of the community, said her former classmate Lilah Pettey, now a first-year student at Colorado School of Mines.
She found ways to bring classmates together, organizing a schoolwide UNO card game tournament, mentoring younger students and devoting herself to her studies — often while volunteering at a hospital and helping care for her younger siblings each week.
She also worked relentlessly to learn English. Pettey remembers Habiba circling nearly “every fifth word” in her copies of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” and spending time between classes flipping through a dictionary to define them.
The following year, Pettey remembered noticing only one or two words circled in one of her textbooks.
“It was really incredible to see the dedication she had to learning the language and to perfecting it,” Pettey said.
Habiba was “incredibly humble,” Pettey said, with a gift for what she called “quiet leadership.” When she spoke about her dream of becoming a doctor, “genuine joy” lit up her eyes.
“The fact that not only was she so excited to be a doctor — to save lives and help people — but she was so excited to go to school for it, to learn,” Pettey said. “It was really inspiring. It was motivational.”
During her senior year, Habiba was recognized as one of the best and brightest high school seniors in Colorado Springs by The Gazette.
“She only got three years with us, but by the end she was one of the most important members of our class,” Pettey said.
The family’s attorney said detention officials took Habiba to a separate part of the facility this month, separating her from her mother and four siblings. DHS officials told the family the move was because she had turned 18, though Lee said Habiba turned 18 just four days after she was detained last June.
“They are regularly threatening to send Habiba to a facility hundreds of miles away if they keep speaking out about their condition,” Lee said.
In her letter shared with lawmakers last week, Habiba said she held on to hope that people will see her family’s innocence and the injustice of their detention, but she was unsure how they would heal.
“This place broke something in us,” she wrote. “Something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix.”