Family of the Boulder attack suspect is facing deportation. What happens next?

By Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN

(CNN) — While Mohamed Soliman occupies a cell in Boulder County Jail in Colorado, hundreds of miles away, his wife and five children are also in detention, at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Soliman, the man charged with attempted murder following an antisemitic firebombing attack Sunday, told detectives that “no one” knew about his attack plans and “he never talked to his wife or family about it,” according to the affidavit for his arrest.

But despite that admission from the Egyptian national, his family is now facing expedited removal from the United States.

How and when did the family come to the US?

Soliman, 45, was born in Egypt but lived in Kuwait for 17 years. He first tried to come to the US in 2005 but was denied a visa, law enforcement sources told CNN.

In 2022, he, his wife and their five children, entered the US as non-immigrant visitors and filed for asylum a month later in September 2022. His wife, a network engineer with a pending EB-2 visa, which is available to professionals with advanced degrees, and children were listed as dependents on the application filed in Denver, the Department of Homeland Security and court documents said.

In 2023, Soliman received a two-year work authorization that expired in March, according to DHS.

Soliman and his wife have two minor sons and three minor daughters ages 4, 4, 8, 15 and 17, family attorney Eric Lee told CNN. Lee is not representing Soliman.

Where are they being held?

Soliman was booked into the Boulder County Jail after his arrest. His family was initially held in Florence, Colorado, about an hour away from their home in Colorado Springs, before they were transferred to a detention facility in Texas.

Soliman’s family was held “incommunicado” and didn’t have access to legal representation after they were in ICE custody on Tuesday, their lawyers said in court documents. At the time of their detention, their asylum application was still pending, and as a result, the Trump administration can’t legally expedite their removal, the documents say.

What rights do they have?

Soliman’s family members have not been charged in the attack and on Wednesday evening, a federal judge ordered a halt to the deportation plans made for the family.

“Punishing individuals – including children as young as four-years-old – for the purported actions of their relatives is a feature of medieval justice systems or police state dictatorships, not democracies,” Lee said in a statement to CNN on Wednesday.

The family’s detention has experts questioning the legality of the family’s detention and visa revocation, calling it unprecedented, even at a time where migrant detentions in courthouse hallways, college campuses, office buildings and during traffic stops across the country are increasing at an exponential rate under significant pressure from the Trump administration, which is tightening the reins on immigration.

“A permanent resident and a non-permanent resident, somebody on let’s say an H-1B visa or some other type of temporary visa … has due process rights,” David Leopold, the former president and general counsel of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said at a news briefing with immigrant rights advocates in mid-March. “Everybody is covered by the United States Constitution. Everybody’s protected by the United States Constitution inside the United States.”

However, immigrants’ presence in the US is generally considered a “privilege” rather than a right and can be revoked for certain reasons laid out in federal law, such as a serious crime.

Once an asylum application is submitted, it’s not uncommon for processing to take years before reaching a decision, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University told CNN, adding that Soliman and his family were within their rights to continue living in the US with a pending application.

It is common however, for ICE to begin investigating one person and realize their family, friends or roommates may also have a questionable immigration status, García Hernández said.

“It’s another matter entirely, to take the conduct of one individual and then ascribe responsibility on the family, on their family members by immediately detaining them and publicly saying that the goal is to deport them,” he said.

Did the family know about the attack?

Soliman’s wife, who CNN is not naming at this time, was “shocked” when she learned her husband had been arrested, her lawyers said in court records obtained by CNN.

She said she and their five children should not be held responsible for her husband’s crimes.

“Arrest first, investigate later, that is not the way that responsible law enforcement officers work,” Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told CNN.

The burden of proof on ICE and DHS is to assess whether the family is a security risk or a threat to the community, Johnson said, and that should be done through meticulous investigation.

During the attack, Soliman shouted “Free Palestine,” according to the FBI and later told authorities that “he wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead,” an affidavit said.

“He’s confessed to a horrible crime, and he is obviously a threat to public safety,” Johnson said. “Taking action against him makes all the sense in the world.”

After his arrest, Soliman’s wife brought an iPhone 14 she said belonged to him to the Colorado Springs police office, the affidavit said.

“I don’t know where this allegation or belief that somehow this man’s family is responsible or guilty of the crimes of their father or husband (comes from),” Johnson said. “To arrest children without having done a thorough investigation, this feels much more like a publicity stunt than a law enforcement action.”

What happens next?

As Soliman’s wife and children wait for more information about their future, their attorneys are fighting to keep the family in the US.

In his order, Judge Gordon P. Gallagher of the US District Court in Colorado wrote, “Defendants SHALL NOT REMOVE,” Soliman’s wife and her children from the District of Colorado or the United States “unless or until this Court or the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit vacates this order.”

Soliman appeared in state court Monday and is expected to appear in state court again Thursday and in federal court Friday. CNN has reached out to his attorney for comment.

Aside from investigating Soliman for any potential mental health issues, investigators are reviewing a notebook he left behind that contains a manifesto written in English with certain lines written in Arabic, according to a law enforcement source, noting police recovered the notebook after Soliman told them where to find it.

Investigators are also reviewing videos Soliman recorded of himself on his phone, both in English and Arabic, the source said.

On the heels of Soliman’s actions, the White House announced a new travel ban on citizens from a dozen nations as part of the first Trump administration’s promise to clamp down on entries from certain countries and visa overstays — which have garnered renewed scrutiny in the attack’s aftermath.

President Donald Trump made the final call after the antisemitic attack, according to a White House official.

The president said in a video posted Wednesday that new countries could be added to the travel ban as “threats emerge around the world,” although Egypt, where the Soliman family is from, was not on the list.

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CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, Eric Levenson and Danya Gainor contributed to this report.