An Egyptian family that’s been detained at Dilley’s South Texas Immigration Processing Center is set to be released after 10 months in detention.
Attorneys for the six detained members of the El Gamal family confirmed the news via Twitter, after successfully arguing their third habeas petition in San Antonio on Thursday.
“The Court has ordered their IMMEDIATE RELEASE,” tweeted Chris Godshall-Bennett, part of their legal team. “I left the courtroom in tears, thrilled that this family can return to their home.”
Eric Lee, another attorney on the Detroit-based team, has been advocating in both the national and local press for their release for months.
“The El Gamals are finally, finally being released,” Lee said Thursday, at last expressing optimism after numerous court setbacks and disappointments over the past year.
However, when Current reached Lee via phone, he was still cautious.
“They aren’t out yet,” Lee said. “ICE hasn’t let them out.”
Lee elaborated on Twitter, stating at 2 p.m. that “[t]he court order has been published demanding ICE release the El Gamal family immediately and ICE has still not yet even agreed to speak to us.”
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, who also wrote the fiery opinion releasing 5-year-old Minneapolis child Liam Ramos from federal custody, signed a court order this morning calling for the family’s immediate release. However, hours later, the single mother and her five children remain locked up in the family detention facility, located approximately an hour from San Antonio.
“I have witnessed first-hand families being released within an hour,” Congressman Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said in a tweet he also shared to Instagram. “ICE should release the family immediately.”
While detained, the family has faced life-threatening medical episodes, including the mother’s recent discovery of a lump in her chest. For weeks, Hayam El Gamal complained of excruciating pain but was denied a CT scan by the Department of Homeland Security and CoreCivic, the private prison company that oversees Dilley. After her condition worsened, she was rushed to the emergency room in March.
There, a CT Scan discovered fluid around her heart, a condition called a pericardial effusion.
The emergency room doctor recommended an ultrasound, but DHS, ICE and CoreCivic denied the request, NBC reports.
In court documents, Lee and Godshall-Bennett argued that she should receive further testing for cancer and other potential health concerns.
El Gamal’s 16-year-old son also faced a life-threatening medical episode inside thanks to untreated appendicitis, according to multiple media reports. The boy was told to simply take a pain reliever before collapsing and being rushed to the hospital.
Meanwhile, representatives for the family said their mental health has also deteriorated. This included the nine-year-old daughter expressing that she “wished that she was no longer alive.”
Every member of the family has experienced a birthday while detained in the facility. The family’s detention has far exceeded the 20-day maximum laid out in the Flores Settlement Agreement, which the Trump administration frequently violates. Lee said the El Gamals are “by far” the family that’s been detained the longest under the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
Hayam El Gamal and her children were detained in June 2025 following the arrest of her former husband, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, whom she divorced while detained.
Soliman was arrested for an antisemitic attack on a Jewish gathering in Colorado involving Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower. He’s still jailed, facing dozens of state and federal charges.
The rest of the family maintain they knew nothing of his plans, adding that he’d been estranged and living apart from them for more than a year when the attack occurred.
Lee — who went viral for sharing videos showing a protest that broke out inside the Dilley detention facility’s courtyard — told the Current in a March interview that he believed Hayam El Gamal and her children, ages 5 to 18, were being held as political retribution.
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