The Case In opposition to Ayman Soliman Might Gasoline Trump Immigration Crackdown — ProPublica

Within the weeks main as much as July 9, Ayman Soliman informed buddies he was fearful of dropping the sanctuary he’d discovered after fleeing Egypt in 2014 and constructing a brand new life as a Muslim chaplain at Cincinnati Youngsters’s Hospital.

Soliman, 51, was to indicate up at 9 a.m. on that date for his first check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement since dropping his asylum standing. He’d been granted the protections in 2018 below the primary Trump administration. Then, within the final month of the Biden presidency, immigration authorities moved to revoke them primarily based on sharply disputed claims of fraud and help to a terrorist group. As soon as President Donald Trump returned to workplace weeks later, court docket data present, immigration officers bumped up the terrorism claims and formalized the asylum termination June 3.

By the point of Soliman’s ICE appointment, buddies stated, he was distraught over the prospect of being returned to the regime that had jailed him for documenting protests as a journalist. He arrived on the company’s area workplace in Blue Ash, Ohio, accompanied by fellow clergy and a few Democratic state lawmakers.

“I didn’t come to America looking for a greater life. I used to be escaping dying,” he stated in a video filmed simply earlier than he entered.

Inside, Soliman’s attorneys stated, he was shocked to seek out FBI brokers ready for him. They interrogated him for 3 hours about his charity work greater than a decade in the past in Egypt, the premise for the Division of Homeland Safety accusations of unlawful help, or “materials help,” to Islamist militants.

His lawyer ultimately emerged from the ICE workplace holding a belt and a pockets. Soliman had been swept into custody, becoming a member of a report 61,000 individuals now in ICE detention. As he awaits an immigration court docket trial Sept. 25, he’s being held in a county jail run by a sheriff who posted an indication exterior studying, “Unlawful Aliens Right here.”

Authorized observers are watching the chaplain’s case as a bellwether of the Trump administration’s capacity to merge the huge federal powers of immigration and counterterrorism. The case can also be a reminder, they are saying, of sweeping post-9/11 statutes that each Republican and Democratic administrations have been accused of abusing, particularly in circumstances involving Muslims.

Materials help legal guidelines ban virtually any sort of help to U.S.-designated international terrorist teams, extending far past the fundamentals of weapons, personnel and cash. Prosecutors describe the legal guidelines as a useful software towards would-be attackers, however civil liberties teams have lengthy complained of overreach.

Through the years, successive administrations have confronted authorized challenges over how they wield the ability; a milestone Supreme Courtroom resolution throughout the Obama administration upheld the legal guidelines as constitutional. Now, nonetheless, there are specific fears concerning the materials help “sledgehammer,” as one authorized scholar put it, within the arms of Trump, who has been overtly hostile towards Muslims and decided to deport one million individuals who’re in the US with out permission.

“These statutes are written terribly broadly with the unspoken premise that discretion can be exercised responsibly. And one factor this administration has proven is that it doesn’t perceive what it means to train discretion responsibly,” stated David Cole, a Georgetown Regulation professor who argued high-profile materials help circumstances and served as nationwide authorized director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

At subject are DHS allegations that Soliman’s involvement with an Islamic charity offered materials help to the Muslim Brotherhood. However neither the charity nor the Brotherhood is a U.S.-designated terrorist group, and an Egyptian court docket discovered no official ties between the teams.

The Biden-era DHS, which first flagged the difficulty, stated it might revoke Soliman’s asylum if “a preponderance of the proof helps termination” after a listening to, in accordance with the December discover. On the time, court docket data present, the fabric help allegation was listed as a secondary concern after extra frequent asylum questions concerning the veracity of official paperwork and his claims of persecution in Egypt.

As soon as Trump got here to energy weeks later, Soliman’s attorneys stated, the fabric help claims metastasized, with U.S. authorities declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a Tier III, or undesignated, terrorist group and including new arguments about ties to Hamas. The Brotherhood, a virtually century-old Islamist political motion, renounced violence within the Nineteen Seventies, although Hamas and different spinoffs are on the U.S. blacklist. Along with the Egypt-related considerations, DHS filings about Soliman had famous warrants for “homicide and terrorism” in Iraq — a rustic Soliman says he’s by no means visited.

By elevating the nationwide safety argument, Soliman’s attorneys stated, DHS was in a position to bypass an immigration choose and order the chaplain held with out bond as “probably harmful.” A longtime terrorism nexus means much less transparency for immigrants — and extra energy for the authorities.

“DHS is choose, jury and executioner,” stated Robert Ratliff, one among Soliman’s attorneys.

The thought of Soliman as a secret militant has outraged residents who know him domestically as “the interfaith imam” and the primary Muslim on the pastoral care staff at Cincinnati Youngsters’s, a top-ranked pediatric hospital. Colleagues described a well-liked chaplain with nicknames for the tiny sufferers and soothing phrases for his or her bleary-eyed mother and father.

Judy Ragsdale, the previous pastoral care director who employed Soliman in 2021 shortly earlier than retiring, stated she wrote a letter to hospital leaders imploring them to talk out towards the allegations that might return him to sure persecution in Egypt. He misplaced authorization to work in June, when his asylum was terminated.

“It is a ‘Schindler’s Listing’ second,” Ragsdale stated she informed hospital leaders. “And when you don’t rise up for Ayman, you’re complicit in what’s taking place to him.”

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Some worry DHS is parlaying the scope and secrecy of counterterrorism legal guidelines right into a weapon to spice up the president’s mass-deportation mission.

Immigrant rights teams say a sped-up marketing campaign with fewer guardrails for due course of is already resulting in removals primarily based on proof that hasn’t been absolutely vetted. If DHS is profitable in check circumstances like Soliman’s, they are saying, materials help claims could possibly be extra simply utilized to immigration circumstances with even tenuous hyperlinks to militant factions, together with newly designated cartels.

The White Home referred inquiries to Homeland Safety, which routed a request for remark to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Providers; a spokesperson there stated in a press release that the company typically “doesn’t talk about the small print of particular person immigration circumstances and adjudication choices.”

“An alien — even with a pending utility or lawful standing — shouldn’t be shielded from immigration enforcement motion,” the assertion stated. The FBI declined to remark.

Jeffrey Breinholt, an architect of the materials help statutes who spent three a long time as a federal terrorism prosecutor, defends the legal guidelines as essential to closing loopholes that had been exploited by international militant teams and their home sympathizers.

Breinholt, who retired in 2024, stated he has no considerations concerning the widening scope because it converges with Trump’s deportation push. The designation of cartels, he stated, “is a pure outgrowth of the success now we have had with ‘materials help’ crime.”

To Cole and different critics, nonetheless, the Soliman case could possibly be “the canary within the coal mine.”

Extra Than a Chaplain

Inside just a few hours of Soliman’s detention, dozens confirmed up for an impromptu rally and information convention within the ICE heart parking zone. That backup has since grown right into a hundreds-strong marketing campaign to refute the DHS allegations, which supporters name a resurgence of anti-Muslim fearmongering that has continued throughout get together strains because the 9/11 assaults 24 years in the past this month.

“Any time you may have a brown man or a Muslim man and you utilize the phrases ‘FBI’ and ‘pink flag,’ you don’t need to say any extra,” stated Tala Ali, a good friend of Soliman’s who heads the board of a Cincinnati mosque the place he generally led prayers.

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Voices calling for Soliman’s launch embody mother and father who met him within the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. The households are in disbelief that the chaplain they’d grown near is now jailed in a high-stakes worldwide case. They knew he’d fled Egypt however stated they had been studying particulars of his ordeal by the marketing campaign to free him.

“It could be very straightforward to be resentful and be offended with the world when it’s a must to reside by that sort of trauma, and he’s not like that in any respect. He’s taking up different peoples’ trauma,” stated Heather Barrow, whose toddler daughter, Mya, died within the NICU final 12 months.

She stated Soliman stepped in to spare her grieving household the heartache of constructing funeral preparations for a 5-month-old. He attended Mya’s celebration of life and, later, a butterfly launch on June 7, which might’ve been her first birthday. A month later, he was in an ICE cell.

“I used to be like, how is that this taking place? He was simply at our home,” Barrow stated.

One other couple, Taylor and Bryan McClain, additionally got here to depend on Soliman when their new child, Violette, arrived at Cincinnati Youngsters’s final 12 months with life-threatening issues. The chaplain steadied them throughout their 271 days within the NICU, which Taylor stated felt like “a curler coaster in a twister and it’s on hearth.” The McClains name him “household.”

“I say with full confidence: Violette is alive due to the advocacy that Ayman gave us,” Taylor stated one latest afternoon as she held her daughter, now simply over a 12 months outdated.

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Clergy members make up one other bloc of help — so many who they constructed a spreadsheet to divide visiting hours amongst imams, rabbis and pastors. Immigration advocates and Ohio civil rights leaders have added their names to petitions. So have College of Cincinnati pupil teams together with the Ornithology Membership and the Harry Potter Appreciation Membership.

Greater than a dozen individuals confronted legal fees stemming from a melee after a rally in Soliman’s help; demonstrators and police blame one another for the violence July 17.

Two of Soliman’s fellow chaplains at Cincinnati Youngsters’s, Adam Allen and Elizabeth Diop, stated they misplaced their jobs for refusing to maintain quiet about their jailed colleague. In the meantime, the hospital, a cherished native establishment, is taking warmth for its silence. Soliman’s supporters launched a letter-writing marketing campaign demanding a response from the hospital, which has stated it doesn’t talk about personnel points.

Indicators appeared exterior the hospital. “Lacking Chaplain,” they stated. “Kidnapped By ICE.”

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Cincinnati Youngsters’s Hospital didn’t return messages looking for remark. In an inside memo revealed by The Cincinnati Enquirer, hospital CEO Dr. Steve Davis informed workers that the dearth of response “shouldn’t be mistaken for an absence of caring or motion.” As a nonprofit, Davis careworn, the hospital has strict guidelines about “actions that could possibly be characterised as political.”

Soliman’s supporters press on. One latest Sunday night, about 200 crammed a Cincinnati church the place preachers from a number of religion backgrounds urged them to demand his freedom.

“The trial that Imam Ayman goes by is our trial,” Abdulhakim Mohamed, head of the North American Imams Fellowship, informed the group. “His justice is ours to personal. The injustice can also be ours to bear.”

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Escape From Egypt

Soliman’s entanglement with the Egyptian safety equipment started in 2000 when he joined fellow faculty college students to protest repressive legal guidelines, he stated in asylum papers.

He was periodically locked up and intimidated after that, he stated. The persecution worsened greater than a decade in the past throughout uprisings that remade the Center East by toppling dictators — together with Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak — however in some locations spiraled into civil struggle.

Soliman labored as a contract journalist protecting pro-democracy revolts in Egypt and neighboring Libya. Pals say he was additionally learning to change into an imam and served on the board of an area chapter of the Islamic charity Al-Gameya al-Shareya, which is understood for its community of hospitals and orphan packages all through Egypt.

The charity, whose title has a number of English spellings, launched in 1912 and is commonly described as “some of the established nationwide Islamic organizations.” Students have written that early leaders got here from the Muslim Brotherhood, archenemy of Egypt’s present army management, however that ties ended round 1990 below authorities strain.

Within the years since, researchers discovered, the group maintained clean relations with the federal government as its greater than 1,000 chapters nationwide embody Egyptians of all political leanings. That delicate stability faltered briefly in 2013 when a military-led counterrevolution quashed the nascent democratic motion and deposed elected leaders who had been a part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt’s army rulers declared the Brotherhood a terrorist group and shuttered any group it suspected of ties. Al-Gameya Al-Shareya was amongst greater than 1,000 civil society teams blacklisted within the crackdown, court docket filings say, and chapters suspected of serving to the Brotherhood throughout elections had been dissolved. The group resumed operations the following 12 months, when an Egyptian court docket lifted the ban, ruling that the charity “has no ties to the Muslim Brotherhood,” in accordance with information reviews.

Egypt’s return to zero tolerance for dissidents made Soliman’s activism harmful, he stated in court docket papers. As a journalist and Islamic scholar, he represented two fields the Egyptian authorities views as existential threats: a free press and non secular organizing.

Soliman fled to the US in 2014 on a customer visa and later filed a petition for asylum, describing how safety forces over time had locked him up on false fees and tortured him with electrical shocks. In a single incident, his legal professional stated, Egyptian forces with machine weapons stormed into an condo the place Soliman was asleep along with his spouse and younger baby. (Via attorneys, Soliman requested to withhold particulars about his household as a result of they continue to be in Egypt.)

“For me, it’s life or dying,” Soliman later informed a U.S. immigration officer of his want to flee.

Officers in Cairo referred inquiries to the Egyptian Embassy in Washington, which didn’t reply to requests for remark.

The asylum utility requested whether or not Soliman had belonged to political events or different associations in his residence nation. Ratliff, the legal professional, stated Soliman marked “sure” and connected a press release that talked about Al-Gameya Al-Shareya and his function in fundraising for the native chapter.

Pals stated Soliman rejoiced when he was granted asylum in 2018, below the primary Trump administration, and sought everlasting residency as the following step towards reuniting along with his household. However the course of stalled. “Bureaucratic hurdle after bureaucratic hurdle,” Ratliff stated.

Then got here a extra critical snag. In 2021, Soliman discovered he was on a federal watchlist when a background verify for a chaplain job at an Oregon jail confirmed that the FBI had flagged him, court docket papers present.

His attorneys stated they do not know why. It might’ve been a couple of particular piece of intelligence. It might’ve been a misspelling or mistaken id, easy errors which have landed peculiar Muslims on opaque “struggle on terror” watchlists which are almost unimaginable to get off.

Soliman, buddies say, insisted on attempting to clear his title. With the assistance of the Muslim Authorized Fund of America, he sued authorities companies together with the FBI and the Transportation Safety Administration. That route led to open-ended authorized battles that yielded no clear solutions and no inexperienced card.

As a substitute, his place within the nation turned extra susceptible. In December, the ultimate stretch of the Biden administration, Soliman acquired discover that the federal government supposed to terminate his asylum primarily based on “inconsistencies” in his claims of persecution and concern that his charity work made him inadmissible primarily based on “doable membership in a terrorist group.”

A few of his buddies are satisfied it was payback for the lawsuits, however attorneys say there’s no telling what triggered a assessment.

“What Ayman has skilled is one thing that, post-9/11, has been the truth of Muslims on this nation,” stated Ali, his good friend and advocate. “All he did was attempt to get solutions and accountability for what he’d been put by.”

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Huge Claims, Little Transparency

Contested asylum circumstances like Soliman’s had been prime targets when Trump took workplace the following month and supercharged deportations, a prime marketing campaign pledge. Since his return to workplace, ICE arrests have doubled.

Soliman was referred to as to an asylum listening to in February, a month into the brand new administration, for a final shot at defending his eligibility. A DHS officer requested about claims within the Biden-era discover alleging “discrepancies in date and variety of instances he suffered hurt” and elevating doubts a couple of handwritten Egyptian police report and letters authenticating his journalistic work.

A transcript exhibits Soliman explaining that he generally received confused when describing traumatic incidents from years in the past in English, his second language. He stated the police report was a tough translation included by mistake and submitted statements verifying his journalism.

Then the DHS officer’s questioning took a flip: “When did you begin supporting Al-Jameya Al-Shareya?”

For the remainder of the assembly, the transcript exhibits, the officer drilled down on Soliman’s information of the charity: fundraising, chapter dimension, help for violence and whether or not he had been conscious of a Brotherhood hyperlink.

One other of Soliman’s attorneys interrupted when the immigration officer stated the Brotherhood had been a Tier III group since 2012. That’s not the way it works, the legal professional countered — solely top-tier terrorist organizations like al-Qaida or the Islamic State are given dates of designation. Tier III, she stated, is for undesignated teams and is set on a case-by-case foundation, with the burden of proof on the federal government.

“Counsel, I’ll give you a chance on the finish to make a closing,” the DHS officer stated.

“I perceive,” the legal professional replied, “however we’re speaking about one thing factual.”

The subsequent time Soliman heard from DHS was the official termination of his asylum, efficient June 3. This time, there was no hedging in language that declared he was ineligible primarily based on “proof that indicated you offered materials help to a Tier III terrorist group.” A couple of weeks later, he was taken into custody and notified of his pending elimination.

Soliman’s authorized staff sued, arguing that he was stripped of asylum on unlawful grounds as a result of the designations had been made “with out correct findings” and primarily based on no new proof.

Courtroom filings present DHS attorneys introducing, then withdrawing or amending, supplies to construct a case linking Soliman to the Brotherhood by the charity.

“It appeared like, ‘What can we put right here to get to there?’” stated Ratliff, a former immigration choose.

Among the many supporting proof filed by the federal government are three tutorial reviews by students with deep information of Islamic charities in Egypt. Soliman’s authorized staff filed statements from all three balking at how DHS had cherry-picked their analysis.

Steven Brooke on the College of Wisconsin-Madison detailed “vital errors of reality and interpretation.” Neil Russell, an instructional in Scotland, referred to as the U.S. conclusions “a mischaracterization of my findings.” Marie Vannetzel, a French scholar who has carried out area analysis with Al-Gameya Al-Shareya, rebutted what she referred to as “a dishonest manipulation of my textual content and my work.”

Vannetzel wrote that she rejects the concept Soliman, “just by advantage of his exercise within the affiliation, could possibly be accused of offering materials help to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Observers of Cairo’s unsparing marketing campaign to uproot Islamist opposition say the matter is clear-cut: If the charity survived the scrutiny of Egyptian intelligence, then it’s not Muslim Brotherhood. “It’s actually putting that this group shouldn’t be proscribed,” stated Michael Hanna, an Egypt specialist and U.S. program director of the nonprofit Worldwide Disaster Group.

Soliman’s attorneys additionally criticized the federal government’s assertion in court docket filings that he, as a board member of 1 native department, would’ve been conscious of any Brotherhood affiliation of chapters nationwide. “If a Rotarian in Seattle commits homicide, we don’t go charging Rotarians in Des Moines with conspiracy,” Ratliff stated.

Separate from U.S. makes an attempt to tie Soliman to the Brotherhood was a puzzling footnote about Iraq that appeared in a later submitting. With out element, DHS attorneys alluded to warrants for “homicide and terrorism actions.” Ratliff stated a DHS legal professional later confirmed to him in a telephone name that it wasn’t about Soliman, however didn’t clarify why it was there.

The error remained uncorrected in filings till Sept. 3, when DHS legal professional Cheryl Gutridge acknowledged in court docket that it was an “inadvertent” reference to a different case, Ohio information retailers reported. The unique wording suggesting that Soliman confronted homicide fees in Iraq had been included within the authorities’s profitable argument for preserving him in custody.

DHS didn’t handle questions concerning the Iraq reference.

An in depth good friend, Ahmed Elkady, stated Soliman informed him on a jail go to he was shocked to be linked to Iraq, a spot he’s by no means been: “He stated, ‘How can I change into a digital terrorist?”

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A Sheriff’s ICE Fiefdom

As he awaits trial in immigration court docket, Soliman is in custody on the Butler County Jail, about 30 miles exterior of Cincinnati, previous cornfields and a German social membership and the City and Nation Cellular Residence Park.

For greater than 20 years, this outpost has been the area of Sheriff Richard Jones, a cowboy hat-wearing firebrand who retains a framed picture of Trump in his workplace. Within the run-up to the 2024 election, Jones mused {that a} Trump victory may put him “again within the deportation enterprise.”

From 2003 to 2021, the jail had been contracted to accommodate immigration detainees till the association dissolved within the Biden period. As predicted, the county entered into a brand new settlement with ICE in February, after Trump returned to energy, to carry round 400 detainees: $68 a day per particular person, plus $36 an hour for the sheriff’s workplace towards transportation.

Jones celebrated the restored partnership by posting a pretend picture displaying inflatable gators exterior the jail, a nod to ICE’s “Alligator Alcatraz” detention heart in Florida. A Black Lives Matter group in Dayton issued a press release calling the sheriff’s publish an “egregious act of cruelty and historic mockery.”

Because it returns to deportation work, the jail nonetheless faces a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in 2020 by two ICE prisoners who stated they endured beatings and discrimination. One plaintiff, a Muslim, stated a jailer referred to as him a “fucking terrorist” and threatened to throw his prayer rug in the bathroom. Jones has disputed the claims.

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The sheriff is within the information once more due to Soliman. In court docket filings, the Muslim chaplain says he was denied entry to an area the place he could lead on communal prayers after which positioned in “isolation” for almost per week with solely an hour of telephone entry between midnight and 1 a.m.

Soliman’s attorneys say in court docket papers that the episode was associated to “focused harassment” over his faith. The sheriff’s workplace informed native retailers that it respects non secular freedom and stated Soliman was positioned in isolation as a result of he was “argumentative” and “threatening.”

After agreeing to an interview with ProPublica, Jones later determined he was “not ,” the sheriff’s spokesperson, Deputy Kim Peters, wrote in a textual content message.

As he languishes in jail, Soliman’s empty condo in Cincinnati has change into a approach station for an internal circle of supporters, who stated they felt like “intruders” after they first gathered there. Soliman is named a chic dresser, however his condo was in bachelor-pad disarray, a mirrored image of his lengthy hours on the hospital and the abruptness of his detention, stated his buddies, additionally clerics. The imams laughed when one confessed that he first thought the FBI had ransacked the place.

Over water bottles and power drinks scavenged from Soliman’s fridge, they talked concerning the deportation menace. In Egypt, pro-government information retailers have already got trumpeted the case as proof that Soliman was main a secret Brotherhood cell in America.

Regardless of Soliman’s predicament, they stated, being in limbo right here is preferable to the choice.

“You suppose I’m afraid of being right here in jail?” Soliman informed fellow imam Ihab Alsaghier throughout a latest go to. “Each second I’m alone, I think about I’m on a flight again to Egypt.”