A federal judge in Colorado issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) Wednesday blocking the deportation of the wife and five children of Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the man accused of carrying out a firebombing attack on a pro-Israel demonstration in Boulder, Colorado, over the weekend.
The decision by Judge Gordan Gallagher came in response to an emergency lawsuit filed by attorneys representing Soliman’s wife, Hayam El Gamal, and their children, who were seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Tuesday. Full hearings in the case are expected next week.
The suit, filed in Federal District Court, seeks the release of the family from custody and an injunction against their removal from the United States. El Gamal and her children, ranging in age from 4 to 17, entered the country on tourist visas in 2022. According to the complaint, El Gamal “was shocked to learn” of her husband’s alleged actions and had cooperated with authorities.
“Punishing individuals for the purported actions of their relatives is a feature of medieval justice systems or police state dictatorships, not democracies,” Eric Lee, one of the family’s attorneys, told the World Socialist Web Site. “The Trump administration’s vindictive attack on this young family echoes the methods of Nazi Germany, where authorities used kin punishment—Clanical—to intimidate the population.
“The detention and attempted removal of this family is an assault on core democratic principles and must provoke widespread opposition in the population, immigrant and non-immigrant alike.”
Sunday’s firebombing attack reportedly left 12 people injured. As of this writing, the identities of the victims remain unconfirmed. However, given the character of the demonstration, it is presumed that many, if not all, are Jewish. Multiple reports indicate that the victims range in age from 52 to 88, with the oldest believed to be a Holocaust survivor. One person remains in critical condition, while several others are receiving treatment in specialized burn units.
President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are exploiting the attack to justify and intensify their ongoing mass deportation operation. At the same time, leading Democrats and Zionist organizations are seizing on the incident to further slander all opposition to the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza as expressions of “antisemitism.”
The World Socialist Web Site opposes individual acts of violence, which serve only to disorient the working class and hand the capitalist state a pretext to escalate police-state repression against all political opposition. As with last month’s killing of Israeli diplomatic staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, Sunday’s desperate, demoralized attack will do nothing to end the ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in Palestine or advance the cause of equality.
Soliman is a 45-year-old Egyptian national who worked as an Uber driver in the US. He is currently facing 16 counts of attempted murder, along with federal hate crime charges, after reportedly using a homemade flamethrower and Molotov cocktails against members of a group called “Run for Their Lives” during a protest in Boulder, Colorado.
Video circulating online in the aftermath of the attack shows a shirtless man holding two clear bottles filled with liquid, believed to be gasoline, yelling at injured people. In the footage, he is heard shouting, “End Zionists” and “Free Palestine.” According to court documents, he stated that he “hated this group and needed to stop them from taking over ‘our land,’ which he explained to be Palestine.” He is currently being held on a $10 million bond.
The group targeted by Soliman, Run for Their Lives, was formed after October 7, 2023 and focuses exclusively on the Israelis taken captive by Hamas during the attack. Closely aligned with Zionist organizations, such as the Israeli-American Council and supported by establishment political parties, the group has organized hundreds of small marches across cities in the United States, Europe and Australia in support of Israel. Speakers at these events frequently include capitalist politicians, Israeli citizens and members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
According to Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, Soliman legally entered the United States in 2022 on a B-2 tourist visa. In September of that year, he applied for asylum. Although his visa expired in 2023, his work permit remained valid until March 2025, and his asylum case was still pending at the time of Sunday’s attack.
Following the attack, Democrats quickly labeled Soliman’s actions—which appear to have been politically motivated by the Israeli genocide—as an example of antisemitism.
On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer posted on X that he had spoken with the FBI “about yesterday’s antisemitic attack,” adding, “I’m urging them to use the full extent of their power to investigate this horror. … Assigning collective blame to Jews for what’s happening in the Middle East is blatantly antisemitic, and it’s happening in too many corners of America.”
In a Monday appearance on Fox News, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), blamed opponents of the Gaza genocide for “creating the conditions” for Sunday’s attack.
Greenblatt stated that what he “really” wants is for “social media influencers on Twitch and YouTube like Hasan Piker,” as well as “other promoters of hate on YouTube and TikTok like Guy Christensen” and “speakers at these graduations—it just happened the other day at MIT”—all of whom he claimed had “created the conditions” for Sunday’s attack—“to stop it once for all. I hope the Trump administration will do just that.”
Posting on his social media platform following the attack, Trump blamed the Biden administration and declared, “This is yet another example of why we must keep our Borders SECURE, and deport Illegal, Anti-American Radicals from our Homeland.”
Despite there being no evidence that Soliman’s family had any knowledge of—or involvement in—Sunday’s attack, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced in a Tuesday post on X that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents “are taking the family” of Soliman “into ICE custody.” Noem added that authorities would be “investigating to what extent his family” knew about the attack.
Around the same time, Fox News reported that Soliman’s family was being processed for “expedited removal,” a policy that allows for rapid deportation without a hearing before an immigration judge. The official White House account escalated the fascistic spectacle by posting Soliman’s mugshot alongside video of the attack, gloating: “Six One-Way Tickets for Mohamed’s Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon. ✈️”
The graphic accompanying the White House post stated that Soliman’s wife and children “Could Be Deported by Tonight.”
The judge’s order on Wednesday directs the White House not to carry out this threat.
The detention and deportation of Soliman’s family must be opposed by the working class. If the US government is permitted to strip immigrants and their families of basic rights based solely on alleged crimes committed by a relative, there is nothing preventing the Trump administration from asserting similar powers in the context of a strike, protest or “national emergency” to detain and deport political opponents of the regime.
