A flight carrying an Egyptian family to Michigan turned around late Saturday after a Texas federal judge ruled that the six should remain in the United States pending further litigation. U.S. District Court Judge Fred Biery in San Antonio said the family should not be immediately deported after immigration agents re-arrested the mother and her children hours earlier.
The ruling came after the government had ostensibly planned to quickly deport the family to Egypt from Michigan, a move their attorneys said would expose the mother and her children to persecution. Eric Lee, one of the family’s lawyers, wrote on X that the plane “constitutionally cannot be allowed to take off,” and earlier on Saturday said the effort to remove the El Gamal family violated a federal court order and had to be stopped immediately.
The family was believed to be the longest held at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, a rare measure of how long the case has already wound through immigration detention. Their detention and the attempted removal now place the dispute squarely at the center of a broader fight over how far the executive branch can go when a judge has already drawn a legal boundary.
The tension in the case is plain: immigration agents re-arrested the mother and her children after a court ruling, then the family was put on a plane anyway before it turned back. Lee later urged, “Stop this travesty of justice from taking place,” and said the attempt to remove the El Gamal family was “in violation of a federal court order and must be halted immediately. The rights of the entire population and the most basic principles of separation of powers are at stake.”
What happens next now matters less as a travel update than as a test of compliance. Biery’s ruling keeps the six in the country for now, and the case will continue to measure whether the government can move ahead while the court is still hearing it.