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The Department of Homeland Security suddenly withdrew the case against him as the detention sparked a community turmoil and became a test of power in immigration courts, an Egyptian pastor who was released from Ohio prison on Friday.
The result was a victory for 51-year-old Ayman Soliman, a popular Muslim clergyman and his family members who hundreds of supporters had counseled at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. DHS moves to restore his status in exile and remove deportation efforts. It comes after a court filing records errors and contradictions in government evidence portraying him as a terrorist.
Just before 1pm, Soliman was taken out of Butler County Jail and photographed by friends and supporters in a plastic bag containing a wide range of smiles and his belongings. He is scheduled for an immigration trial next week and faces deportation to Egypt.
“This is beyond my dream,” Soliman told Propovika in a call a few minutes after he was released. “I’m still overwhelmed by surprise.”
One of his lawyers, Robert Latliff, said Soliman’s status in exile has been revived and his green card application has been revived. Earlier on Friday, Ratriff had submitted documents showing inconsistencies in the language that would have been the same notice of end of asylum as Soliman. One version called him a “member” of a terrorist group, and the other accused him of providing illegal aid to the terrorist group. Soliman denied both competitions.
Friday’s submission documented an update on a series of inconsistencies in government evidence reported by Propublica this month.
“From the start, everything was flawed,” Ratliff said. “This is certainly a victory for him, and it’s huge. Unfortunately, he had to spend about 70 days in prison to get to this point.”
“Material Support” and Ohio Pastor: How 9/11 terrorist rules empower Trump’s immigrant crackdown
A DHS official said immigration officials “cannot discuss the details of individual immigration cases and ruling decisions.” However, the official added that “aliens are not protected from immigration enforcement measures, despite pending applications and legal status.” The agency is “responsible for managing America’s legal immigration system and ensuring the integrity of the immigration process.”
After leaving the prison, Soliman joined the community prayer on Friday at a local mosque. There, Imam welcomed his release as a godsend and celebrated his friend as “a free man, as he always is.”
Adjacent to supporters at a press conference Friday evening, Soliman said he had distrust that his day had begun to be detained. He came from a restaurant where he enjoyed “salads, fruits and meat” after weeks of prison food. He said he “got out of words” because of the support system he jumped into his defense. He said he received 760 letters while in prison from people he had never met.
“It’s free today for this advocacy,” Soliman said. “Don’t underestimate your voice.”
Soliman will be greeted as he leaves Butler County Jail in Ohio. Credit: Provided by Ahmed Elkady
The challenges of Soliman across two administrations are more complicated than most targets of President Donald Trump’s immigrant crackdown.
After fleeing persecution of his journalists and protests in Egypt, Soliman was granted exile under the first Trump administration in 2018. Then, in the last month of Joe Biden’s presidency, immigration officials moved to revoke their status based on sharply contested claims of fraud and aid to terrorist groups. Immigration officials pushed up terrorism claims and officially halted the asylum on June 3, when Trump took office in a few weeks, court records show.
The DHS had built a lawsuit on allegations that Soliman’s involvement in Islamic charities provided illegal assistance or “material support” to the Muslim Brotherhood. However, neither the charity nor the Brotherhood were terrorist organizations designated by the United States, and Egyptian courts found no official relationships between the groups.
The Material Assistance Act prohibits almost any type of assistance to foreign terrorist groups designated in the United States. Prosecutors describe the law as an invaluable tool to want to be an attacker, but civil liberty groups have long been suing for violations.
The Biden-era DHS, which first flagged charity issues, said it would cancel Soliman’s asylum if “the superiority of evidence supports termination” after the hearing “the termination is supported,” according to a December 2024 notice. At the time, court records show that after more general asylum questions regarding the truthfulness of official documents in Egypt and the allegations of persecution by Soliman, significant support claims were listed as secondary concerns.
When Trump came to power a few weeks later, Soliman’s lawyers argued that material support had been transferred, and U.S. authorities argued that the Muslim Brotherhood would declare a Tier III, or an undesignated terrorist group, adding new debates about its relationship with Hamas. Hamas and other spinoffs have been blacklisted in the US, but in the 1970s, the Brotherhood, a Muslim political movement almost a century ago, abandoned the violence.
The court filing indicates that DHS’s attorneys will introduce and withdraw or amend materials to build a case linking Soliman to a charity. Almost immediately, the evidence began to be solved.
Among the support documents submitted by the government were three academic reports by scholars with deep knowledge of Egyptian Islamic charities. Soliman’s legal team submitted statements from all three about how DHS conducted the research. Scholars described “important mistakes in fact and interpretation,” “false characterizations,” and “incorrect manipulation of my text.”
A separate footnote from the US that attempts to link Soliman to the Brotherhood is a country that Soliman has never visited, as DHS lawyers hinted at a warrant of “murder and terrorism” in Iraq. The DHS has admitted in court that the policy is false after being included in the government’s successful debate to detain him.
Legal scholars specializing in national security were monitoring the incidents as a measure of how much force the Trump administration could use at the intersection of counter-terrorism and immigration.
Ratliff said victory was important, but he didn’t think the outcome would stop DHS from invoking similar debate in other immigration cases.
“The connection in this case would always be too tenuous to withstand scrutiny,” Ratliff said. “But I think this format is still a form that DHS would see.”
From religious leaders to college students and parents he met in hospital, Soliman’s supporters welcomed his release.
“I know tomorrow he’ll return to his job, his job of caring for his community,” said Lyn Tramonte, executive director of the Ohio Immigration Union, one of the advocacy groups that promoted his release.
