Lawyers said the El Gamal family was detained by the Trump administration hours after returning from 10 months in detention.
A US federal court has blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from deporting a woman and her five children after they were released from immigration detention.
Hayam El Gamal and her five children, aged between 5 and 18, were detained for 10 months before being released earlier this week on a judge’s order. They were the longest-detained known family members during President Trump’s second term.
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But on Saturday, just days after returning to their home in Colorado, immigration authorities detained the family again and demanded immediate deportation, their attorney said.
“The Trump administration kidnapped the El Gamal family in violation of a federal court order from the Western District of Texas on Thursday not to detain or remove the family from the United States,” the family’s attorney said in a statement shared by attorney Eric Lee.
“Any attempt to remove the El Gamal family is in violation of a federal court order and must be stopped immediately,” it added.
Shortly afterward, Lee announced that U.S. District Judge Fred Bailly, who had ordered the family’s initial release on Thursday, had granted an emergency order barring their release on Saturday.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
The Trump administration has at times ignored court orders barring people from being deported from the United States and pursued a hard-line approach that ignores legal constraints.
This came 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 in June 2025, after her ex-husband Mohamed Sabri Soliman attacked people who had gathered to support Israeli prisoners held by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Boulder, Colorado.
An 82-year-old woman later died from injuries sustained in the incident.
Soliman’s family condemned the attack and denied knowledge that it would take place, and NBC News reported that El Gamal divorced her husband shortly after her arrest.
An FBI agent also testified under oath that there was no evidence that the family, who have not been charged with any crime, knew of the father’s plans.
Their nearly year-long detention by the Trump administration has been described by the families’ lawyers and several members of Congress as an illegal and cruel effort to punish them for acts they did not commit.
After Soliman’s arrest, the White House said in a post on X that it would seek the immediate expulsion of Soliman’s family, who their lawyers said came to the U.S. on a tourist visa from Egypt.
A White House post read: “Six one-way tickets for Mohammed’s wife and five children. Final boarding call will be made shortly.”
The family’s health deteriorated and they did not receive proper medical care while in custody, the lawyer said. El Gamal was admitted to the hospital in early April due to a medical emergency related to an untreated tumor in his chest.
Immigrant rights groups say it is usually illegal to detain children for long periods of time.
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said in a statement earlier this week that the Trump administration’s motives are clear if it seeks to remand families despite a judge’s order to release them.
“If, despite the judge’s recommendations, the Department of Homeland Security still opposes the release of an innocent woman and her five children, we know exactly why,” Durbin said.
“It’s not because they pose any danger to the community or pose a flight risk. It’s because they are immigrants, Arab-Muslim immigrants.”
