Live updates of persecuted El Gamal family are being reported at the World Socialist Web Site:
El Gamal family being returned to Colorado following judicial order blocking deportation
On Saturday afternoon, a flight carrying Hayam El Gamal and her five children from Willow Run Airport in Michigan to New Jersey was diverted midair and ordered back to Michigan. The family was then placed on a return flight to Colorado, in compliance with an order from US District Judge Fred Biery.
The return followed a day in which the Trump administration sought to deport the family in defiance of a court order. Their attorneys responded with a series of emergency filings seeking to block the illegal maneuver.
The El Gamal family had been released from Dilley detention center on Thursday, after a ruling from Judge Biery. However, on Saturday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) re-detained the family during what was supposed to be a check-in, escalating the Trump administration’s campaign of collective punishment against a family that has never been charged with any crime.
One of the family’s attorneys, Eric Lee, warned in an urgent post: “THE EL GAMAL FAMILY WAS REDETAINED BY ICE MOMENTS AGO. ICE SAYS DEPORTATION IS IMMINENT. PLEASE ACTIVATE YOUR CONTACTS TO STOP THIS TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE FROM TAKING PLACE.”
The attorneys’ issued a subsequent statement declaring, “The Trump administration has kidnapped the El Gamal family in violation of a federal court order for the Western District of Texas.” It referred to an order by Judge Biery issued Thursday directing ICE “not to detain or remove the family from the United States.”
After the family “arrived home in Colorado this morning,” the attorneys reported, “Hours later, ICE arrested them all and has put them on a plane headed for Detroit’s Willow Run Airport, and then outside the United States on an unknown location.”
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Biery’s previous order on Thursday was the product of months of legal struggle in which federal judges rejected the government’s effort to hold and deport the family based on “guilt by association” with the alleged actions of Hayam El Gamal’s estranged husband. The family had already endured nearly ten months of imprisonment and repeated violations of basic medical care and humane treatment while in federal custody.
By seizing the family again, ICE effectively sought to nullify the authority of the federal judiciary and the specific release order that was supposed to protect the family from precisely this sort of retaliatory action.
This action is consistent with the administration’s broader strategy: to establish a precedent that the state can punish relatives, terrorize children, and carry out collective reprisals to intimidate the population as a whole. The El Gamal family has been treated as a political trophy—from the White House’s earlier public threats to deport “Mohamed’s Wife and Five Kids,” to the sustained effort to portray children as “national security threats.”
