It appears the government continues to try to decide for itself which court orders to follow.
Note to my future self.
On Saturday, Hayam El Gamal walked into an ICE office in Denver for a required check-in. Agents arrested her and her five children and put them on a plane.
They came to the United States on tourist visas in 2022 and applied for asylum before those visas expired. Hayam and her five children — ranging in age from five to eighteen — spent nearly ten months in a detention facility in Dilley, Texas. None of them have been charged with any crime.
They were detained last June after El Gamal’s ex-husband was charged in connection with a firebombing attack in Boulder, Colorado. El Gamal condemned the attack and divorced him. The government held the family anyway.
On April 23rd, a federal judge ordered them released. Two days later came the check-in, the arrest, the plane.
Their lawyers rushed to four federal courts. Two judges issued emergency orders halting the deportation. Only then did the plane turn around mid-flight and return them to Denver.
DHS responded by calling the presiding judge an “activist” appointed by Bill Clinton, and labeled the family “terrorists and their associates.”
It appears the government continues to try to decide for itself which court orders to follow.
Notes To My Future Self 