Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the agency would be investigating whether Mohamed Sabry Soliman’s family had information about his alleged plot.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on Tuesday arrested and detained the family of Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the Egyptian man who allegedly led a terror attack Sunday in Colorado, officials said.
“Today the Department of Homeland Security and ICE are taking the family of suspected Boulder, Colo., terrorist and illegal alien Mohamed Soliman into ICE custody,” the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said in a video message on social media on Tuesday.
Ms. Noem said that the agency would also be investigating what his family knew about the attack, which injured 12 people during an event in Boulder in support of the Israeli hostages being held in Gaza. The suspect allegedly threw homemade Molotov cocktails into the crowd.
The State Department revoked the visas of Mr. Soliman’s wife and five children after the attack, said Tricia McLaughlin, a D.H.S. spokeswoman. ICE officials arrested them on Tuesday, she said.
The White House trumpeted the arrests on social media, saying on Tuesday afternoon that the family “could be deported by tonight.”
Mr. Soliman entered the United States in August 2022 on a tourist visa, which he later overstayed, D.H.S. officials said Monday. He applied for asylum in the fall of 2022 with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, but his case was still pending, officials said. During his time waiting for his case to be processed, he was able to obtain a work permit, they said.
Trump administration officials have pointed to the attack as proof of what they say were lax immigration policies during the Biden administration.
“Suicidal migration must be fully reversed,” Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, said on social media Sunday.
The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that his agency would be targeting other foreign nationals for potential revocation of visas.
“In light of yesterday’s horrific attack, all terrorists, their family members, and terrorist sympathizers here on a visa should know that under the Trump Administration we will find you, revoke your visa, and deport you,” he wrote on social media on Monday.
