CINCINNATI — Since July 9, Ayman Soliman, who served for years as a Muslim chaplain at Cincinnati Kids’s Hospital, has been held on the Butler County jail in Ohio. His arrest by Donald Trump’s quota-obsessed ICE, throughout a routine federal check-in, sparked a neighborhood outcry, largely attributable to his well-established observe file of comforting and dealing with the households of dying and severely in poor health kids throughout his years at Cincinnati Kids’s.
None of that issues to the Trump administration, which is preventing to deport Soliman again to Egypt whereas branding him a terrorist sympathizer. Soliman’s authorized staff say that such claims are a baseless smear that he has the proof to rebut, and stresses that “he faces demise if compelled to return to Egypt.”
Shortly after he arrived on the jail early final month, the imam informed associates that was making an attempt to work as a de facto chaplain of the jail and counseling others behind bars there. He informed his associates that a number of the jail’s workers even mentioned to him that if he’s launched and allowed to remain in Ohio, that Soliman ought to return as an precise chaplain with the jail.
However in line with a number of of Soliman’s associates, in addition to a habeas corpus petition filed by his authorized staff Thursday morning, one thing modified dramatically in latest weeks and the previous kids’s hospital chaplain was thrown into isolation, which at occasions additionally included “solitary confinement.” Pals say that these latest days of this detention have shredded the imam’s psychological well being.
“It felt like I used to be trying into the face of any individual who had simply been tortured,” says Rev. Elizabeth Diop, who till just lately additionally labored as a chaplain on the Cincinnati Kids’s Hospital. Diop was fired from the hospital for violating the corporate media coverage by talking out in help of her fellow chaplain.
Diop tells Rolling Stone that she visited Soliman and spoke to him, by way of video display on the jail, this previous Sunday and the Sunday earlier than that. Throughout that interim week, Soliman was put into isolation, and Diop says she may simply see the toll it took on him.
“He appeared disturbed. His eyes seemed like he was in ache. He was speaking actually quick, and sounded despairing. I’d by no means seen him like that,” she says. “He mentioned he was imagining being deported and being killed. He mentioned he couldn’t sleep as a result of his roommate was speaking a lot all through the night time. He mentioned [the jail] wouldn’t let anyone speak to him by the door. He mentioned he couldn’t order from the commissary and the meals was actually exhausting for him to eat. He mentioned he was considering doing a starvation strike and I strongly discouraged that. I believe he simply was so hopeless he was simply making an attempt to consider something he may do to attempt to sort things.”
Diop provides: “He mentioned to me, and I’m paraphrasing right here, that it appeared like they had been making an attempt to torture him into leaving quite than preventing to remain.”
Thursday’s public courtroom submitting (which you’ll learn beneath in full) states that whereas “detained at Butler County Jail, Petitioner has been positioned into segregated detention by brokers of DHS and officers of the Butler County Sheriff’s Workplace,” and that this “custody placement was a results of focused harassment attributable to Petitioner’s try and follow his faith.”
The doc continues: “This segregated detention resulted in solitary confinement, denial of entry to visitation, and restricted entry to authorized calls with counsel, with calls being restricted to the interval of 12:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. every day. Petitioner was positioned beneath this confinement from on or about August 2, 2025, till August 5, 2025.”
Soliman’s advocates say that the doc provides a conservative estimate of the size of the isolation interval, which they are saying lastly ended on Wednesday. A number of on his staff, together with one in every of his attorneys Robert Ratliff, say Soliman was held in isolation on the jail for roughly “six days.” Ratliff notes that his understanding is that the isolation was initially slated to final 20 days, however that Soliman was allowed to “return to common inhabitants” early. The authorized staff remains to be looking for solutions concerning the “focused harassment” and what Soliman and his attorneys are calling out as an unwarranted punishment.
“He was in search of to hope with another detainees. They had been making an attempt to hope in a typical space that’s open to all inmates. He was informed that was not acceptable. That was the idea of the segregation,” Ratliff says, relaying Soliman’s account.
The Butler County Jail didn’t reply to a voicemail in search of touch upon this story.
Up to now week, completely different authorized and political workplaces, together with a U.S. congressman’s, had been looped into the behind-the-scenes efforts to get Soliman launched from isolation early. Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) and his staff had been quietly concerned in latest days: “We made calls and glad it obtained resolved,” the congressman says. “We’re hopeful that it doesn’t occur once more.”
Adam Allen, one other Cincinnati Kids’s chaplain who was fired after publicly supporting his arrested former colleague, says he spoke to Soliman previous to his launch from isolation, and tells Rolling Stone that “Ayman informed me he filed a criticism each day since being put in isolation, and his criticism was escalated.” Allen recounts that when he spoke together with his pal, “Ayman is the type of one that cares about different individuals earlier than he cares about himself. He informed me the final [several] days have been particularly exhausting. … However then he requested me about me, and I attempted to redirect it to him however then he simply requested me how my son was doing, so I indulged him.”
Quickly after, Allen says he requested Soliman how he may pray for him, to which the imam replied: “Allah would assist me by this take a look at.”
Requested what he would say to Trump or others concerned with Soliman’s jailing, Allen responds: “Ayman is a paragon of the type of particular person we wish on this neighborhood, and that this has occurred to him demonstrates the type of cruelty that has been unjustly dealt to each immigrant. And that must be a wakeup name to reform the system in a approach that’s simply and truthful.”
Soliman’s advocates argue that the way in which he has been locked up and handled for the previous month — together with within the aggressive method that the Trump administration, out and in of courtroom, has wielded Warfare on Terror-style propaganda towards him — is one more symptom of this authorities’s ultra-draconian crackdowns on authorized immigration. The human price of the previous six months is already incalculable. And if Trump’s staff will get its approach on circumstances like Soliman’s, there may very well be huge potential for increasing the administration’s already staggering abuses and lawlessness.
“That is one thing that [the Department of Homeland Security] can do to anyone. I don’t care when you’re an asylee for 27 years or when you’ve turn out to be a U.S. citizen,” says Ratliff. “On this case, solely DHS initiated termination proceedings. DHS determined solely on their very own that their proof was ok. DHS determined solely on their very own that Ayman’s proof wasn’t ok. And DHS determined solely by itself that immigration courts don’t have jurisdiction as a result of they’re throwing out these unsupported allegations that he’s a terrorist. … This implies DHS can revoke anyone’s asylum, and do that to anyone. That is one thing that has far reaching potential penalties, if Ayman’s case is left to play out this manner, and the courts don’t intervene and cease DHS from deporting him.”
