A federal judge in San Antonio ordered the immediate release of an Egyptian mother and her five children from a Texas immigration detention facility Friday — ending nearly 10 months of confinement that had drawn national attention and sharp criticism from immigration advocates.
The ruling came after attorney Chris Godshall-Bennett argued a habeas petition on behalf of Hayam El Gamal and her children, who had been held at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. “Just finished arguing the El Gamal family’s habeas petition in San Antonio. The Court has ordered their IMMEDIATE RELEASE,” Godshall-Bennett said in a statement. “I left the courtroom in tears, thrilled that this family can return to their home.”
The Case Behind the Detention
The family’s ordeal began after the arrest of the father, Mohamed Soliman, who faces charges related to an alleged antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colorado — an incident involving Molotov cocktails that injured dozens. El Gamal and the children were not charged. Still, they were swept into immigration detention, where they remained as the legal case against Soliman wound through the courts.
What followed the judge’s order was, by any measure, an ugly standoff. Attorney Lee took to X to report that ICE had gone conspicuously quiet even after the ruling came down. “The court order has been published demanding ICE release the El Gamal family immediately and ICE has still not yet even agreed to speak to us,” Lee wrote. The agency’s silence, in the face of a federal court order, raised immediate questions about compliance — and about who, exactly, is running the show.
Dilley’s Numbers Are Cratering
The El Gamal case isn’t happening in a vacuum. New data shows the broader picture at Dilley is shifting dramatically — and fast. The number of families booked into the facility plummeted by more than 75% in February compared to the previous month, dropping from an average of roughly 600 bookings per month down to just 133. By mid-March, that figure had fallen further still — to 54, according to ProPublica.
That’s a staggering collapse for a facility that was, not long ago, one of the largest family detention centers in the country. The drop in child detainees has been equally stark, with new figures confirming a sharp decline in the number of minors currently held there. Whether that reflects fewer border crossings, shifting enforcement priorities, or something else entirely isn’t entirely clear — but the numbers don’t lie.
What It Means
For El Gamal and her children, none of the policy debates matter much right now. After ten months behind the walls of a detention center in the Texas scrubland, they’re going home. The legal fight was long, the bureaucratic resistance was real, and the emotional toll — on a mother, on five kids — is the kind that doesn’t just evaporate the moment a judge signs an order.
That’s the part that tends to get lost in the broader immigration debate. The statistics and the politics are real, sure. But so is the image of an attorney walking out of a San Antonio courtroom in tears.
