On Saturday, April 25, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) re-detained Hayam El Gamal and her five children 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.
The family is reportedly on a flight to Willow Run Airport outside Ypsilanti airport, before deportation.
The family’s attorney, 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 declaration that “deportation is imminent” underscores the essentially extrajudicial character of the administration’s actions—an attempt to override due process through sudden detention and rapid removal.
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 refers to an order 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 report, “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.”
The statement notes that “Counsel for the El Gamal family have filed emergency motions in the Western District of Texas and the Fifth Circuit, as well as a new petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the District of Colorado,” and warns that “the rights of the entire population and the most basic constitutional principles of separation of powers are at stake.”
The attorneys identify the aircraft—“The flight’s tail number is N416AW”—and issue an urgent appeal: “The attempt to remove the El Gamal family is in violation of a federal court order and must be halted immediately… The legal team urges the population to exercise its free speech rights to stop this unlawful deportation from taking place.”
In a further rebuke to the Trump administration’s attempt to deport the El Gamal family in defiance of the courts, US District Judge Fred Biery granted an emergency ex parte motion Saturday, ordering that the family’s removal from the United States and from the District of Colorado is stayed. Attorney Eric Lee warned that the plane carrying Hayam El Gamal and her five children was expected to land in Michigan within an hour and “constitutionally cannot be allowed to take off.”
The judge’s previous order that the family be released 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 is effectively seeking 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.”
Workers and young people must demand: Stop the deportation! Release the El Gamal family immediately! End the persecution of this family and all victims of collective punishment! Shut down the Dilley detention center and every immigrant concentration camp!