Family of Boulder suspect taken into ICE custody for expedited removal, U.S. says

Federal authorities said Tuesday that they had taken into custody the family of the man accused of injuring at least a dozen people at a Colorado demonstration to support Israeli hostages in Gaza and that they are expediting their deportation from the United States.

The White House and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said on social media that Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Mohamed Sabry Soliman’s wife and five children two days after he allegedly used molotov cocktails to attack marchers in Boulder. Noem said the agency was investigating “to what extent his family knew about the heinous attack” and “if they provided support.”

On its X account, the White House wrote that the family had been placed in expedited removal proceedings and that “THEY COULD BE DEPORTED AS EARLY AS TONIGHT.”

Immigration and criminal defense lawyers struggled Tuesday to recall similar examples of entire families being detained for deportation proceedings immediately after a relative was charged with a crime. And some immigration experts questioned the legality of deporting Soliman’s family members under expedited removal, a fast-track deportation process created in 1996 that does not allow immigrants to have a hearing before an immigration judge. They are also not entitled to a lawyer.

“It’s not normal,” said Derege Demissie, who has been practicing law for nearly 30 years and is a former president of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “I don’t remember a situation where family members who are not connected with any criminal activity are targeted by ICE because a close or related family member is charged in connection with a crime.”

Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, said Tuesday that the State Department had revoked the family’s visitor visas.

Administration officials began warning almost immediately after the attack that Soliman’s family could face deportation, even though authorities said Monday that they were cooperating with the investigation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X on Monday that “all terrorists, their family members, and terrorist sympathizers here on a visa should know that under the Trump administration we will find you, revoke your visa, and deport you.”

Lucas Guttentag, a Stanford law professor and a former immigration policy adviser to the Biden and Obama administrations, said visa holders generally are ineligible for expedited removal because they arrived with valid legal documents.

Since Congress created the rapid process, it has been used mainly to quickly deport recent border crossers. Trump officials in January expanded its use nationwide to target people who had been in the United States for up to two years. Officials said people who arrived without visas or who obtained them via fraud could be subject to rapid removal.

Soliman, 45, has been charged with a federal hate crime and Colorado state charges of attempted murder. He told investigators that he had spent a year planning the attack against the Jewish group that organized Sunday’s march and aimed to “kill all Zionist people,” according to court records. He also said he had waited until his daughter graduated from high school to carry out the attack, an arrest affidavit states.

In an arrest affidavit, Boulder Police Department detective John Sailer said Soliman told investigators that “no one knew about his plans and he never talked to his wife or family” about the attack.

Soliman told FBI special agent Jessica Krueger that he had hidden a phone “with messages to his family” inside a desk drawer at his home, according to court records. After his arrest, Soliman’s wife turned over to the Colorado Springs police office a phone she said belonged to her husband, according to the records.

The suspect’s immigration status has become a focal point for the Trump administration. In a social media post Monday, the president accused him of coming in through “Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy,” and multiple officials have referred to Soliman as an “illegal alien.” But several experts said his immigration status and whether he is eligible for removal are complicated.

Soliman was born in Egypt and told investigators that he had lived in Kuwait for 17 years before moving to the United States, according to an arrest affidavit. He entered the United States in August 2022 on a B-2 tourist visa that expired in February 2023, according to McLaughlin. She said Soliman had filed for asylum in September 2022. People who have applied for asylum are generally protected from deportation while their cases are pending.

It is unclear whether Soliman’s family also applied for asylum, though it is common for relatives to submit their requests together. Under expedited removal, asylum seekers are supposed to get special consideration. The 1996 law said an immigrant who fears persecution is entitled to an asylum screening and an administrative review of that matter before they can be deported, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Soliman had worked as a driver for Uber since 2023, a company official said, and had satisfied the ride-hailing company’s numerous eligibility requirements, including passing a criminal-background check and a driving history review, as well as holding a valid Social Security number. The company had not received concerning feedback about Soliman while he was a driver, the official said, but it has since moved to ban his account.

The Trump administration’s decision to arrest Soliman’s family is in contrast to a 2023 court settlement with an Iraqi man whom officials deported to Rwanda in April.

The man, Omar Abdulsattar Ameen, was granted refugee status in the United States in 2014, but the first Trump administration and the Biden administration later accused him of having links to the Islamic State.

In the settlement, Ameen agreed to be deported to an alternative country, and the government said it would process the immigration applications of his family, including minor children, though it did not guarantee the outcomes.

The U.S. government has previously investigated relatives and associates of terrorists and in some cases has pursued criminal charges.

After the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, for example, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s friends from Kazakhstan were quickly detained for alleged student visa violations, and then separately charged in federal court with crimes. And ICE routinely arrests family members together for civil immigration violations.

But Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute, said that in the Soliman case, the government has not had time to investigate whether his family was involved in the attack.

“It’s outrageous to punish the family members of a terrorist for an attack he committed,” he said. “The person responsible for the crime is the terrorist and those who knowingly or intentionally aided and abetted him. Being related to a terrorist is not and cannot be a crime in a free country.”