The authorities reportedly intend on deporting Mohammed Sabry Soliman’s wife and five children in an “expedited removal.’
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
The entire family of the Egyptian charged in the Boulder, Colorado attack on anti-Hamas Jewish protestors that left twelve injured has been detained by the American authorities and faces deportation.
After Mohammed Sabry Soliman was arrested on the scene Sunday, having allegedly thrown two Molotov cocktails and trying to use a makeshift flame thrower on the group, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents took his wife and five children into custody.
Calling Soliman a “terrorist,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement Tuesday, “Mohammed’s despicable actions will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but we’re also investigating to what extent his family knew about this horrific attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it.”
They were immediately stripped of their visa status and, after the official inquiries are completed, sources told The New York Post that the authorities plan to use a legal method called “expedited removal” to force them out of the country quickly.
The family is currently being held in a detention facility in southern Texas, The Post noted.
On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had posted to X regarding the attack that “all terrorists, their family members or terrorist sympathizers should know that under the Trump administration, we will find you, revoke your visa, and deport you.”
While FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said on X that the agency would investigate the attack “as targeted acts of terror,” the initial indictment against Soliman does not include terrorism charges.
He has so far been charged with a total of 16 counts of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated by the charge of having committed a federal hate crime.
The hate crime charge was added because, the federal complaint said, he “willfully caused bodily injury” based on people’s “actual or perceived race, color, religion or national origin.”
Soliman, who had overstayed his work visa and was therefore in the U.S. illegally, tried to set the small crowd of pro-Israel demonstrators on fire while yelling at them, “End Zionists,” and “Free Palestine.”
A witness, Aaron Brooks, told CNN that “I want to make sure that people know clearly this was an antisemitic attack. I was here. I heard what he said. I heard him clearly say ‘You’re burning my people’ or ‘You burnt my people.’”
The federal complaint additionally stated that he had told his interrogators that “he wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead.”
He said that he had found online the activities of the American Run For Their Lives group that publicizes the plight of the 58 hostages the Hamas terrorist group is still holding captive in Gaza, and specifically targeted it “because he hated this group and needed to stop them from taking over ‘our land,’ which he explained to be Palestine,” the complaint stated.
It added that Soliman had also said that “he would do it…again.”
He also said that while he had planned the attack for a year, no one, including his family, had known about it.
Initial reports said that his family was cooperating with the authorities, with his wife giving them an iPhone on which he had allegedly left them messages before taking the 100-mile trip to Boulder from their home in Colorado Springs to execute the attack.
A neighbor of the family told Fox News that Soliman’s wife was “a stay-at-home mom” and they were all “really nice people,” who invited their neighbors to their home and gave out food, especially during the Moslem holy month of Ramadan.
If Soliman is convicted, the hate charge alone carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. In addition, all the other felonies, including state charges, add up to over 600 years in jail.
The post Family of Egyptian charged in Colorado attack faces deportation appeared first on World Israel News.