Community members and politicians on Wednesday expressed outrage about Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detainment of a former chaplain for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital who sought asylum after being tortured and detained in Egypt for the reporting he did there as a journalist.
The former chaplain, Imam Ayman Soliman, is a native of Egypt who was detained Wednesday after an hours-long check-in with ICE at the Homeland Security Office in Blue Ash, Ohio, his attorneys say. Soliman entered the U.S. legally in 2014 and applied for asylum soon after, Christina Jump, lead counsel for Soliman, told HuffPost. He was granted asylum status in 2018. But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services revoked his asylum status in June, after telling him in December it intended to do so, Jump noted.
“Mr. Soliman came to the United States seeking refuge from the torture and persecution he suffered in Egypt,” Jump said. “He reported on the totalitarian dictatorship in Egypt at the time of the revolution there. For that, he endured repeated torture and threats to his family. He came to the United States and legally asked for asylum. He proudly worked here, most recently as a chaplain in a children’s hospital, so that he could continue to help others.”
