Ayman Soliman, a former chaplain at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital, was put in "solitary confinement" after being jailed by Donald Trump
Jailed by Trump’s ICE, Children’s Hospital Chaplain Was Thrown Into ‘Solitary’
Ayman Soliman is locally renowned for helping the families of dying kids. Now, friends say he’s been “tortured” in isolation as the Trump administration tries to deport him
[A]ccording to several of Soliman’s associates, as well as a habeas corpus petition filed by his legal team this morning, something changed dramatically in recent weeks and the former children’s hospital chaplain was thrown into isolation, which at times also included “solitary confinement.” Friends say that these recent days of this detention have shredded the imam’s mental health. “It felt like I was looking into the face of somebody who had just been tortured,” says the Rev. Elizabeth Diop, who until recently also worked as a chaplain at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Diop was fired from the hospital for violating the company media policy by speaking out in support of her fellow chaplain. “He seemed disturbed. His eyes looked like he was in pain. He was talking really fast, and sounded despairing. I’d never seen him like that,” she says. “He said he was imagining being deported and being killed. He said he couldn’t sleep because his roommate was talking so much throughout the night. He said [the jail] wouldn’t let anybody talk to him through the door. He said he couldn’t order from the commissary, and the food was really hard for him to eat. He said he was contemplating doing a hunger strike, and I strongly discouraged that. I think he just was so hopeless he was just trying to think of anything he could do to try to fix things.” Diop adds: “He said to me, and I’m paraphrasing here, that it seemed like they were trying to torture him into leaving rather than fighting to stay.”
