A family has remained detained for 10 months at a South Texas ICE facility despite a judge’s release order, raising due process concerns about Trump administration legal tactics. Associated Press file photographs / Houston Chronicle IllustrationLast fall, Hayam El Gamal and her five children were about to walk out of a Texas immigration detention center after a judge ruled in their favor.The immigration judge, Justin Adams, determined that the family – citizens of Egypt who had lived in Kuwait – could be released as long as they paid a $15,000 bond. In a memo explaining the decision, he noted they had lived in the U.S. since entering with tourist visas three years earlier, had no criminal record, provided “numerous letters of support from their local community” and were engaged in “diligent efforts” to obtain asylum.Article continues below this adIt was a huge relief for El Gamal and her kids. Three months earlier, her husband, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was accused of an antisemitic firebombing attack in Colorado, and the Trump administration publicly vowed to deport the whole family. But multiple federal agencies acknowledged that neither El Gamal nor any of her children had anything to do with the attack. (El Gamal and Soliman are now in divorce proceedings.)“I don’t see danger as an issue,” Adams told a prosecutor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the family’s bond hearing last September, according to a transcript. Adams, himself a former prosecutor for the agency, also noted that the family was “cooperating with law enforcement” and that ICE’s contention that they were a flight risk was “very shaky.”But El Gamal and her children, whose ages range from 5 to 18, were never released. They’ve now been in the Dilley Immigration Processing Center — the only ICE detention center in the nation that currently holds kids and their parents — for 10 months. That’s far longer than any other family in ICE detention during the Trump administration, according to one of the family’s lawyers, Eric Lee. Article continues below this adWhat happened? President Donald Trump’s administration used two crucial procedural maneuvers — called an “automatic stay” and “pretermittance” — to keep the El Gamals detained. Previous administrations seldom used either tactic, but they have become far more common during Trump’s second term, according to hundreds of pages of court records and interviews with experts and attorneys. By using the automatic stay, ICE exerts its authority to block a migrant’s release from detention, even if an immigration judge has ordered it. Meanwhile, “pretermittance” allows an immigration judge to summarily deny the asylum application. Neither mechanism gives migrants an opportunity to present a counter argument, creating profound constitutional concerns. “There is no concept more fundamental to democratic rule of law than an opportunity to be heard,” Lee said.Adams later reversed his initial order granting bond to El Gamal and her children, and this week he denied a request from them to reconsider. That’s likely a reflection of political pressure on immigration judges, experts say. Article continues below this adThe Trump administration has fired dozens of immigration judges who ruled in favor of migrants and replaced them with hardliners — some of whom “are relishing the fact that they’re rubber stamping what the administration is doing,” said Daniel Hatoum, an attorney with the nonprofit Texas Civil Rights Project who is not involved in the case. As public opinion turns against Trump’s immigration policies, the Dilley detention center’s population has dwindled to fewer than 100 in recent weeks. But the El Gamals are still waiting and feel increasingly hopeless. “Every week they get worse,” Lee said. “I am concerned on a daily basis that the children are suicide risks … They say things like they don’t want to be alive. They wish they were dead.”Hayam El Gamal's health has also worsened considerably. Lee said she has a "growth on her chest" that's caused pain for weeks and that she was sent to the emergency room last Friday, but still hasn't gotten all the follow-up care doctors told her she needed.Article continues below this ad"Please join us in demanding the El Gamal's immediate release so that she can acquire the urgent medical attention she desperately needs. This family has suffered enough," Lee wrote in a social media post this week.ICE referred questions about El Gamal's recent health crisis to the Department of Homeland Security, which wrote in an email: "Claims that ICE is delaying or denying medical services to the El Gamal family are categorically false."‘Six one-way tickets’Before they were uprooted last summer, El Gamal and her children were leading quiet lives in Colorado Springs. The family came to the U.S. in 2022 on tourist visas, which expired a few months later, and then applied for asylum. El Gamal, a former teacher, secured a work permit and earned a professional certification for a future information and technology job. The kids were thriving in school, and the eldest, then-17-year-old Habiba, had been awarded a college scholarship by the local newspaper. Article continues below this ad“The more kids from this wonderful family that we could have in the school, the better,” said Elizabeth Reinhold, who’d taught Habiba and two of her siblings, during a press conference organized by Colorado Springs residents earlier this year. Parents, students and faculty of the Thomas MacLaren School in Colorado Springs held a press conference in January asking for Hayam El Gamal and her five children to be released from federal detention.Sean Beedle / Colorado Times RecorderSoliman was rarely home, working long hours driving for Uber and often sleeping in his car, his family later told authorities and immigration officials. They were shocked when he was accused of throwing Molotov cocktails into a crowd of peaceful protesters on June 1, 2025, killing one person and injuring 15. Authorities say Soliman yelled “Free Palestine” during the attack and later told police he meant to target a “Zionist event.” The government arrested Soliman and charged him with multiple hate crimes, incarcerating him at the Boulder County Jail in Colorado. El Gamal and the children were sent to the ICE family detention center in Dilley, Texas. Meanwhile, the Trump administration made it clear that the plan was to deport them as soon as possible. “Six One-Way Tickets for Mohamed’s Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon,” the White House’s official X account posted on June 3. Then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also tweeted, “(w)e are investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack.” Three months later, during the family’s bond hearing, the answer to that question seemed clear: There was no evidence they knew anything about it. Drawings by Hayam El Gamal’s young children.Images provided by attorneys for the El Gamal family.“I want to help people. I want to become a doctor,” Habiba testified in front of Adams, the immigration judge. “There’s no way I could … approve of hurting people.” The family submitted more than a dozen letters from friends, teachers and school administrators in Colorado Springs attesting to the same. “I beg the court to return these innocent people — a mother and her children — to the community where they are known and loved,” wrote an administrator for the school that one of El Gamal’s younger daughters attended and was set to begin fourth grade. “The American people have nothing to fear from Ms. El Gamal and her children.” Even the FBI had confirmed in a federal court hearing for Soliman weeks earlier that his family “had no inkling at all that he was planning to do this or even thinking about doing anything like this,” according to a transcript of that proceeding.Adams cited all of those factors in his decision to release El Gamal and her children from Dilley on Sept. 19. A couple in Colorado Springs immediately stepped up to pay the $15,000 bond and was ready to host the family in their home. In the American criminal justice system, that usually would have been the end of the matter. If prosecutors want to appeal the bond decision, they’d have to provide a strong, fresh legal argument — likely with new evidence — after the person’s release.Not so in the immigration system, where ICE can deploy the “automatic stay.” ‘A place where God no longer exists’Created in the wake of 9/11, the automatic stay lets ICE file a simple, bare-bones notice of appeal to keep people in immigration detention for months — even after a judge has said they should go free. According to Lee and other immigration attorneys, the government rarely used this tactic in the past, but that appears to be changing. For instance, an immigration judge granted a Palestinian woman’s release from a North Texas ICE detention center two separate times in 2025, but the agency used the automatic stay both times to hold her for more than a year.The woman, Leqaa Kordia, was finally released last month after she paid $100,000 and ICE chose not to block her for a third time. By then, federal judges across the country had questioned the constitutionality of the automatic stay in dozens of other cases. At least one such finding came from a Trump appointee, who ruled last fall that the automatic stay allowed ICE “to unilaterally deprive (a man) of his liberty” after an immigration judge ordered his release on a $3,000 bond. Another federal judge made a similar ruling for the El Gamals in November, writing that the automatic stay “violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.” But by then it was too late; ICE had bought enough time to protest the bail ruling using a different mechanism — essentially, by appealing to a separate government panel, which granted the agency’s request a few weeks later.“Even though, according to a federal judge, two months of this family’s detention were unquestionably in violation of the Constitution, tough luck,” said Lee, the El Gamals’ attorney. As the legal wrangling went on, El Gamal and her children felt increasingly desperate. Habiba’s college plans evaporated, and they were evicted from their apartment in Colorado. The government had also canceled the family’s pending asylum applications, so they had to re-apply — this time without access to the voluminous records usually required for such submissions and without their electronic devices, which they had handed over to law enforcement.They were now stuck indefinitely in the family detention center in Dilley, which has faced widespread allegations of poor conditions — including lack of adequate schooling, rotting food and dangerously substandard medical care. Leecia Welch, an attorney for the group Children’s Rights who has visited Dilley several times in the last year, said many of the families she’s met with have brought up the El Gamals. “It’s heartbreaking to people, especially when they reflect on how kind and caring and helpful the family is” to other detainees, Welch said. Drawing by Hayam El Gamal's young son.Images provided by attorneys for the El Gamal family.According to Lee and Welch, the family has serious health issues that haven’t been addressed. One of the youngest children has 13 cavities, for instance, that needed attention months ago. In an email to the Houston Chronicle, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson called those claims “categorically false.” “Ms. El Gamal insisted that her child be sedated while having their cavities filled. As this is a rare request, ICE does not have the capabilities to sedate dental patients onsite, and an off-site referral has been placed,” the spokesperson wrote. Welch disagreed, calling it a “standard request” to ask for sedation for a young child. Dozens of other immigrants have provided sworn statements attesting to similar issues as part of a longstanding court case over family detention conditions. For instance, one mother said her autistic daughter was not provided medication that increases the oxygen flow to her brain. A 13-year-old said she felt “lucky” that she has only vomited or had diarrhea after eating the food "because so many other kids have more intense issues.”A sworn statement from Welch summarized how some of her clients feel about Dilley: “a living hell, soulless … a place where God no longer exists.” The DHS spokesperson told the Chronicle that “the Dilley Detention Center is retrofitted for families” and “all of this is generously funded by the US taxpayer.” The same day ICE sent the statement to the Chronicle, U.S. Reps. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, and Greg Casar, D-Austin, visited Dilley and told reporters there have been no improvements at the facility under new DHS Secretary MarkWayne Mullin.Castro told the Chronicle he met El Gamal and her children during a trip to the detention center back in February. On Tuesday, Castro and Casar posted statements on social media calling for the family’s release, with Castro describing the children as “bright, gracious, and innocent.”“The mother has fluid near her heart and is in severe pain but won’t be given proper care,” Castro said. “The 5-year-old daughter needs dental surgery but ICE refuses care.”‘I want to go home’In December, six months after they’d first been sent to the family detention center in Dilley, El Gamal and her children faced more setbacks. The main attorney handling their asylum case had to withdraw due to a sudden health crisis. But Veronica Segovia, the immigration judge overseeing the asylum application — a separate process from their attempt to get released — insisted that they proceed with a scheduled hearing that month anyway, without any legal representation.“I am begging you, please allow us time. We are not ready to answer any questions,” El Gamal told Segovia through an interpreter, according to an audio recording of the Dec. 29 proceeding.“I have heard you, Ms. El Gamal. I’m not postponing any longer,” said Segovia, who denied more than 95% of the asylum applications in her court last year, according to an independent nonprofit that tracks such data. “We’re going to get started.” Segovia then read aloud from the family’s asylum application, repeating each question and answer from the voluminous document and asking if they wanted to make any changes or additions. She did not point out that some of their answers were technically incomplete. Without access to their electronic devices or personal records, they couldn’t specify exactly which dates they had traveled to Egypt to visit family. And they didn’t answer a query about any leadership positions they held in religious organizations, since women and children can’t have such roles at a mosque. Normally, immigration attorneys and experts say, asylum applicants would get a chance to fix those minor deficiencies. But last April, the Trump administration told immigration judges that they co