Interfaith leaders in Ohio delivered Gov. Mike DeWine a letter Monday, asking him to intervene in Imam Ayman Soliman’s immigration case ahead of a hearing scheduled Tuesday morning.
“Throughout your decades of service—as Prosecutor, Attorney General, U.S. Senator, and now Governor—you have acted with courage when injustice demanded it,” the letter read. “Time and again, you have demonstrated a willingness to do what is right.”
Soliman is an Egyptian national who was granted “indefinite” asylum status by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2018, until the agency terminated his asylum status in June. Long before he was an interfaith chaplain at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Soliman documented civil unrest in Egypt in the early 2010s. Then, after his arrest and torture, he fled the country for the United States in 2014.
Soliman has said being sent back would be a “death sentence.”
Muslim and multi-denominational Christian leaders, including one of the two chaplains fired by Cincinnati Children’s after they were vocal about Soliman’s case, held a news conference Monday morning before they brought the letter to DeWine’s office.
Tala Ali, chair of the Cincinnati Islamic Association, knows Soliman well from the Clifton Mosque. Ali attended his Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) check-in where he was detained.
“(DeWine) can have weight with this and we urge him to do this before, you know, at least to to make a statement,” she said Monday. “Literally, Ayman’s life is in the hands of this judge.“
The federal government began its termination of Soliman’s asylum status in December 2024, citing his involvement with a nongovernmental organization in Egypt—Al-Jameya al Shareya, or Al-Gam’iyya al Shar’iyya—which Egypt has alleged has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is defined as a terrorist organization in Egypt but not in the United States.
Ali said the case against Soliman is “nonexistent.”
Soliman has been held for weeks in the Butler County Jail, with other ICE detainees. Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones said DeWine’s involvement would not matter to him. Generally, the federal government has exclusive authority over immigration law.
“I do not fear the governor,” Jones said in an email statement.
A spokesperson for DeWine declined to comment on the case via text.
