Last December, Imam Ayman Soliman, who had been living in Cincinnati and at one point served as a chaplain at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, saw his asylum status change. Last month, he was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and faces possible deportation. Now, he’s suing over his status.
Soliman came into the U.S. on a temporary visa in March 2014 and was granted asylum status in 2018 during the first Trump administration. He applied for green card status in 2019, which was denied six years later. It was the Biden administration, which was particularly lax on immigration enforcement, that started to revoke Soliman’s status last December.
Soliman’s attorneys recently sued the federal government in a bid to regain his asylum status.
According to the Ohio Capital Journal, the federal government brought up concerns that Soliman was connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.
“He said the government used a set of inaccurate claims and misinterpreted academic articles to revoke it in the first place. The academics themselves agreed, according to documents filed in a Cincinnati federal court last week,” the Ohio Capital Journal reported. The federal government also claimed Soliman provided “material support of terrorism.”
Soliman was a board member of an organization called al-Jameya al-Shareya while in Egypt. WCPO reported his attorneys claim an asylum officer labeled al-Jameya al-Shareya a Tier III terrorist organization last year, although neither the U.S. nor Egypt have designated the group as such. According to the Ohio Capital Journal, the federal government holds al-Jameya al-Shareya worked with the Muslim Brotherhood on “community-based projects” in the 2010s.
Congress has been highlighting concerns with the Muslim Brotherhood for years. The House Oversight Committee held a hearing on July 11, 2018, “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Global Threat.”
There has also been a recent push to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Last month, Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Fla., and Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., introduced legislation to label the group as such. The effort in the Senate was led by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Also in July, The Hill published an opinion piece from Dov S. Zakheim on the topic, “Congress should designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.” Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Last weekend, Cleveland Jewish News also shared a piece weighing in on the Muslim Brotherhood, and how the group must be designated as terrorist group. It was originally published by the Gatestone Institute.
Over the weekend, The Free Press Journal wrote that the U.S. is getting closer to designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
This should not matter in the case of Soliman, said Steven Brooke, faculty director of Middle East Studies at the University of Wisconsin. “Individual instances of cooperation or overlap do not indicate that al-Jameya al-Shareya is organizationally allied to the Muslim Brotherhood,” he wrote to the court.
The lawsuit from Soliman is not the only recent update in the case. Soliman will remain in custody, though he could be relocated. Robert Ratliff, an attorney for Soliman, shared that the Department of Homeland Security “will have the authority to relocate him,” according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. It could be to another state or even another country.
As the report also mentioned:
The Cleveland Immigration Court on July 29 gave DHS attorneys until Aug. 12 to respond to Soliman’s objections to the loss of his asylum status and related matters. After another hearing on that date, Judge Jennifer Riedthaler-Williams will set a trial date.
Riedthaler-Williams on July 28 agreed with DHS lawyers that she did not have jurisdiction to grant Soliman’s request for bond and release from jail.
The Daily Signal reached out to the DHS and ICE for comment on Soliman’s lawsuit.