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An Egyptian chaplain whose detention sparked a community uproar and became a test of counterterrorism powers in immigration court was released from an Ohio jail on Friday as the Department of Homeland Security abruptly withdrew its case against him.
The outcome is a victory for 51-year-old Ayman Soliman, a popular Muslim cleric whose hundreds of supporters include families he counseled at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. The DHS move to restore his asylum status and drop deportation efforts comes after court filings documented errors and inconsistencies in the government’s evidence portraying him as a terrorist.
Just before 1 p.m., Soliman walked out of Butler County Jail with a broad smile and a plastic bag containing his belongings, a moment filmed by his friends and advocates. He had been scheduled for an immigration trial next week and faced deportation to Egypt, which he fled in 2014 because of political persecution.
“This is beyond my dreams,” Soliman told ProPublica in a call minutes after he was freed. “I’m still overwhelmed by the surprise.”
Soliman’s asylum status was reinstated and his application for a green card has been revived, said Robert Ratliff, one of his attorneys. Early Friday, Ratliff had filed documents showing wording discrepancies in what should have been identical asylum termination notices to Soliman. One version called him a “member” of a terrorist group and the other accused him of providing illegal aid to a terrorist group. Soliman has denied both contentions.
The filing on Friday documented the latest in a series of inconsistencies in the government’s evidence, which ProPublica reported this month.
“From the beginning, everything was flawed,” Ratliff said. “This is certainly a victory for him, and it’s huge. Unfortunately, he had to spend approximately 70 days in jail to get to this point.”
“Material Support” and an Ohio Chaplain: How 9/11-Era Terror Rules Could Empower Trump’s Immigration Crackdown
A DHS official said immigration authorities “cannot discuss the details of individual immigration cases and adjudication decisions.” But the official added, “An alien — even with a pending application or lawful status — is not shielded from immigration enforcement action.” The agency is “responsible for administering America’s lawful immigration system, ensuring the integrity of the immigration process.”
After leaving the jail, Soliman joined Friday communal prayers at a local mosque, where an imam welcomed his release as a godsend and celebrated his friend as “a free man, as he always should be.”
Flanked by supporters at a news conference Friday evening, Soliman said he was still in disbelief that his day had begun in custody. He’d just come from a restaurant where he enjoyed “salad and fruit and meat” after weeks of jail food. He said he was “out of words” for the support system that sprang to his defense. He said he received 760 letters while in jail from people he’d never met.
“I’m free today because of this advocacy,” Soliman said. “Don’t underestimate your voice.”
Soliman is greeted as he exits Butler County Jail in Ohio.
Credit:
Courtesy of Ahmed Elkady
Soliman’s ordeal, which spanned two administrations, is more complex than most targets of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
After fleeing persecution over his journalistic and protest activities in Egypt, Soliman had been granted asylum in 2018 under the first Trump administration. Then, in the last month of the presidency of Joe Biden, immigration authorities moved to revoke the status based on sharply disputed claims of fraud and aid to a terrorist group. Once Trump returned to office weeks later, court records show, immigration officials bumped up the terrorism claims and formalized the asylum termination on June 3.
DHS had built the case on allegations that Soliman’s involvement with an Islamic charity provided illegal aid, or “material support,” to the Muslim Brotherhood. But neither the charity nor the Brotherhood is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, and an Egyptian court found no official ties between the groups.
Material support laws ban almost any type of aid to U.S.-designated foreign terrorist groups. Prosecutors describe the laws as an invaluable tool against would-be attackers, but civil liberties groups have long complained of overreach.
The Biden-era DHS, which first flagged the charity issue, said it would revoke Soliman’s asylum if “a preponderance of the evidence supports termination” after a hearing, according to the December 2024 notice. At the time, court records show, the material support allegation was listed as a secondary concern after more common asylum questions about the veracity of official documents and Soliman’s claims of persecution in Egypt.
Once Trump came to power weeks later, Soliman’s attorneys said, the material support claims metastasized, with U.S. authorities declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a Tier III, or undesignated, terrorist group and adding new arguments about ties to Hamas. The Brotherhood, a nearly century-old Islamist political movement, renounced violence in the 1970s, though Hamas and other spinoffs are on the U.S. blacklist.
Court filings show DHS attorneys introducing, then withdrawing or amending, materials to build a case linking Soliman to the Brotherhood through the charity. Almost immediately, the evidence began unraveling.
Among the supporting documents filed by the government were three academic reports by scholars with deep knowledge of Islamic charities in Egypt. Soliman’s legal team filed statements from all three balking at how DHS had cherry-picked their research. The scholars described “important mistakes of fact and interpretation,” “a mischaracterization” and “a dishonest manipulation of my text.”
Separate from U.S. attempts to tie Soliman to the Brotherhood was a puzzling footnote in which DHS attorneys alluded to warrants for “murder and terrorism” in Iraq, a country Soliman has never visited. DHS acknowledged in court that the line had been an error — after it had been included in the government’s successful argument for keeping him in custody.
Legal scholars specializing in national security were monitoring the case as a gauge of how much power the Trump administration could wield at the intersection of counterterrorism and immigration.
Ratliff said that the win was important but that he didn’t think the outcome would deter DHS from invoking similar arguments in other immigration cases, especially involving cartels, which the Trump administration designated as terrorist organizations, unlocking material support powers.
“The connections in this case were always going to be too tenuous to withstand scrutiny,” Ratliff said. “I think, though, that this format is still the format we’re going to see DHS take.”
Soliman’s supporters — from religious leaders to university students to parents he met at the hospital — welcomed his release.
“I know tomorrow he’ll get right back to the work he does, of caring for his community,” said Lynn Tramonte, executive director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, one of the advocacy groups that pushed for his release.
