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.”
The statement noted 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 warned that “the rights of the entire population and the most basic constitutional principles of separation of powers are at stake.”
The attorneys issued 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.”
Judge Biery responded by granting an emergency ex parte motion Saturday afternoon, ordering that the family’s removal from the United States and from the District of Colorado was stayed.
Lee warned that the plane carrying Hayam El Gamal and her five children was expected to land in Michigan and “constitutionally cannot be allowed to take off.”
The plane nevertheless took off from Michigan before being diverted and returned. After a delay at Willow Run airport, the family was flown back to Colorado Saturday night.
Also Saturday, US District Judge Nina Y. Wang (District of Colorado) issued an order that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE “shall not remove” any of the family from the District of Colorado or from the United States unless and until the order is vacated by the district court or the Tenth Circuit.
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 is 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.”