A lawyer for the former wife of an Egyptian man accused of attacking a rally in Colorado last year said she has been in acute pain from a chest mass for weeks and that doctors at the Dilley family detention center in Texas have denied her proper medical care.
Hayam El Gamal has been in immigration detention since shortly after her then-husband, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, allegedly launched makeshift incendiary devices at a rally for the release of Israeli hostages, injuring several people, one of whom died weeks later. El Gamal’s lawyer, Eric Lee, said she repeatedly sought help from doctors at the federal facility over several weeks. Doctors brushed aside her concerns, Lee said, giving her ibuprofen and telling her not to lift heavy objects.
Last week, a doctor at the detention center told El Gamal that she needed a scan but that he had been overruled by “higher-ups,” Lee alleged in court documents filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.
On April 9, El Gamal’s pain became “excruciating” and she was taken to an outside emergency room, where a CT scan showed a mass and fluid around her heart, the filing said. Further tests are needed to determine whether the mass is cancerous, it adds.
Lee said they are waiting to see if the federal judge considering the family’s imprisonment case could weigh in on the medical situation. El Gamal, 42, and her five children — ages 5 to 18 — were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last year soon after Soliman’s arrest.
“Unfortunately that’s all we’re able to do at this point because ICE is not working out a medical solution for this family,” Lee said.
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new petition.
The Trump administration has made clear it wants the family removed from the country, with the White House posting on X at one point: “Six One-Way Tickets for Mohamed’s Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon.”
Soliman has been charged with a federal hate crime and state counts of attempted murder in connection to the attack in Boulder in June, which killed Karen Diamond, 82, and injured more than a dozen others. He has pleaded not guilty.
El Gamal’s lawyers have argued that she had no advance knowledge of Soliman’s alleged plans and that the family is being illegally detained.
A federal judge in Colorado blocked their immediate deportation in June, but an immigration judge in a separate case later denied their asylum applications and ordered the family deported back to Egypt. Lee alleged that was done without a full hearing on the evidence and challenges on the ruling are ongoing.
The family was taken to the Dilley facility in South Texas, a massive detention complex for immigrant families and children where advocates have documented wide-ranging medical issues, including a measles outbreak. Detainees have also reported contaminated food and limited clean water.
In a February news release titled “Debunking the mainstream media lies about South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas,” ICE said that the facility is “purpose-built” to ensure families are comfortable and “have all of their needs cared for — all at the taxpayer’s expense.” That includes access to classrooms, age-appropriate activities, and formula and supplies for infants, it states. There is “specialized off-site care” including “hospitalization, specialty consultations, lab testing and durable medical equipment,” the statement said.
In court filings, Lee said that El Gamal had suffered a “serious medical incident” on April 9 and “faces heightened health risks as a result of denial of treatment” while in federal custody. El Gamal has had an abnormal growth on her chest that has caused pain for weeks, and her requests for scans and outside treatments were repeatedly denied, the filing said.
Each time El Gamal made a request for medical attention, she was given ibuprofen or provided with generic suggestions such as “prevent dehydration” and “avoid heavy lifting,” the court filing states.
The day of the medical incident, El Gamal was taken to an off-site emergency room and given a CT scan, according to the filing. The scan showed the mass in her chest and fluid around her heart, the court document said.
“Instead of receiving an ultrasound as per her desperate request, Ms. El Gamal was told she had to go back to Dilley,” the filing states. “It is not known whether the growth is cancerous, all that is known is that the pain is increasing.”
An Emory University doctor who reviewed the initial scan at Lee’s request said another test was needed to evaluate the mass for infection or cancer, the filing said. No follow-up tests have been scheduled, Lee said.
Lee said in an interview that, in addition to El Gamal’s medical issues, one of El Gamal’s children requires dental treatments and that they are worried about the mental health of all of them.
In March, the Texas Tribune published notes and pictures from the children, including one that said detention is “slowly killing us on the inside.”
The family’s attorneys have long argued that their detentions are illegal and violated their constitutional rights by depriving them of due process and protection from being punished for another person’s alleged crimes.
“It is patently unlawful to punish individuals for the crimes of their relatives,” El Gamal’s lawyers have written. “Such methods of collective or family punishment violates the very foundations of a democratic justice system.”
The couple and their children, who are Egyptian citizens, had applied for and obtained visitor visas and entered the United States on Aug. 27, 2022, records show. Soliman applied for asylum for the entire family the following month, and the family settled in Colorado Springs. At the time of her detainment, El Gamal was a network engineer with a pending employment-based visa for professionals with advanced degrees, court records said.
Soliman told investigators he had planned the attack for a year and sought to “kill all Zionist people,” according to court documents. A Boulder Police Department detective said in an affidavit that Soliman told police that “no one knew about his plans and he never talked to his wife or family” about them.
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