This next cartoon is seriously important. It is how every parent of a gay kid who accepts their child’s sexuality feels. Can you imagine a father who accepts his gay son talking to them about lube? And I don’t even want to discuss the parents who refuse to accept their child’s sexuality and instead try to force them to change. Hugs
A 5-year-old girl detained in Dilley drew herself and her family trapped in a cage.Credit: Courtesy / Eric Lee
A 9-year-old girl detained in Dilley’s South Texas Family Residential Center says she wants to die, according to family attorney Eric Lee, who recently went viral when a protest erupted inside the facility as he tried to visit his clients.
“The 9-year-old has expressed that she wishes she was no longer alive,” Lee said in a Wednesday phone interview with the Current.
Lee said the mother conveyed her child’s alarming wish to him in a recent a phone call from within the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility an hour southwest of San Antonio, which houses over 1,400 people, including hundreds of children.
Lee represents a family of five, consisting of the 9-year-old along with 5-year-old twin sisters, a 16-year old brother, an 18-year-old sister and her mother. All are Egyptian citizens, and all have had birthdays inside the facility. The minors are not named in this article to protect their identities.
The family, which immigrated from Kuwait, has been detained in Dilley for eight months for what Lee calls “political retribution” from the Trump administration for the alleged crimes of the family’s patriarch, Mohamed Soliman. Soliman became a suspect in an anti-Semitic attack in Boulder, Colorado last June using Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower.
The attack left seven people injured. One 82-year-old woman died from injuries relating to the attack 24 days later. Soliman received 12 counts of federal hate crime and 118 state criminal charges.
When the attack occurred, Soliman had been estranged from the family for at least a year, living in his car over an hour away and working as an Uber driver, according to Lee. Soliman only saw his family once a week at most, the attorney added, saying they had no knowledge of his plans. The family has spoken out condemning the attack and the mother, Hayam El Gamal, is now seeking a divorce.
Over the months of detainment, their mental health has deteriorated, Lee said.
On a previous visit, the 9-year old daughter gave Lee a picture she drew inside Dilley. The drawing is of the Colorado house she hasn’t seen in the months she’s been in detention.
A 9-year-old child detained in Dilley for months drew this picture of her one-time home.Credit: Courtesy / Eric Lee
One of the five-year-old twins also gave Lee a drawing, which depicts her and her family in a cage. She told Lee that she had a dream that she was trying to run away from a wild animal.
“But she’s stuck in a cage and can’t get out,” Lee said.
The family’s younger kids also have begun skipping meals, “which they hadn’t been doing before,” Lee added.
People detained at the Dilley site have complained that the food inside sometimes is served with bugs, worms and mold. Lee described the water there as “putrid.”
The 16-year-old boy at one point suffered from appendicitis and was told to simply take a pain reliever before collapsing and being rushed to the hospital.
“He could have died,” Lee said.
But, if deported, the family could face certain death in Egypt, Lee claims, for cooperating with the FBI and speaking out against their patriarch.
The Detroit attorney says after months of detention, the Soliman family’s optimism began to rapidly decline in January.
“They really believed that the immigration judge was going to give them a fair hearing after he granted them bond in September,” Lee said. “And so they were hopeful, they were hopeful that they were going to be released through that process, and they weren’t.”
Meanwhile, even the older siblings have shown signs of worsening mental health, despite attempting to hold it together for their family, the attorney added.
“[T]he 16 year old, who’s been kind of, you know, rock solid, taking on the role of man of the house — his attitude has really begun to change,” Lee said. “And that goes for all of them.”
The oldest daughter, Habiba Soliman, was separated from her family once she turned 18 as punishment for talking to the press, Lee asserted. Separated from her family, she’s also been denied religious exemptions, he added.
“They’ve been calling me less in the last week or so, which I think is because they’re just sort of despondent and depressed,” Lee said of his clients. “That’s been the goal from the start, to ruin these children’s lives. And they didn’t do anything.”
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, who wrote the fiery opinion releasing 5-year-old Minneapolis boy Liam Conejo Ramos from the same facility, will consider the family’s third habeas case, but Lee doesn’t know when.
“It’s a deplorable situation. There’s really no silver lining,” Lee added.
Many people seem to expect me to draw this comic forever. You’ve seen the amount of hate that I get for it. Anyone who googles my name will be terrified to even speak to me. Every bit of the person I am is being shred and crushed and mocked. It’s practically destroying my life and any hope that I do anything else in the future, as well as affecting me on physical and mental levels.
Now why am I still doing it? Part of it because making comics is everything I wanted in my life. I guess I could make comics that would make the majority feel good or that aren’t political, but that would feel like betraying my readers. Another part is because those readers are amazing and give me life. People have been sharing their stories with me in a way that would make any creator jealous.
The fact is that I am doing all of this by myself. I never got any help or support from publishers, editors, media, government or visible person of any kind. I’m putting everything in your hands. I trust my readers to keep this project alive. It might make my anxiety peak, as I know that as soon as you grow disinterested in my silly stories, I won’t have any other choice to survive than change my name and return to school.
So please, keep reblogging those stories, like them, comment on them. That’s the reasons why they’re out there. ❤
I know I already posted the one below but I love it and wanted to post it again. I wish shy abused gay me had a protector. The predators seemed everywhere. Hugs
I will never tone down or stop fighting for everyone’s equality. I wonder how many politicans said hey tone down this civil rights for black people stuff back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Where would they have been if they had been listened to? Same with marriage equality—far too many democrats said don’t push for it. Either we all have equality of civil rights or no one does. I will not agree to disagree on someone’s basic rights.
What is with the desperate need to murder people, even criminals? It doesn’t deter crime and can’t be reversed if it is found out to be a wrong conviction. Hugs
ICE was desperate not to have another death in their concentration camps especailly a baby. This was a dilerberat attempt to kill the child. They left them stranded on the other side of the border. Think of it. They were lucky they were allowed to keep the money they had because I have read of ICE people taking the money before releasing the person. How can anyone support this? But maga wont know about this because right wing media won’t report on it and maga doesn’t go outside their media bubble. How can we live with this? How do the people who did this live with themselves? Do they have no humanity, no empathy? I am tearing up simply posting this, they did the act. A two month old child might well die do to the actions of the US government and the gang thugs they hire. Deep sadness. Hugs
Juan Nicolás had ended up in the hospital while in ICE detention. Now he’s in Mexico.
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
ICE has deported 2-month-old Juan Nicolás with his mother and father to Mexico, despite the baby suffering from bronchitis while in ICE detention.
Nicolás’s mother spoke to Univision’s Lidia Terrezas by phone Tuesday, saying that they were left at the Mexican border with no phone and only the money they had in their commissary at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, an ICE facility where they were previously detained.
Terrezas said in an Instagram post that Nicolás is still sick and that his mother was only able to contact her because someone in the street let her use their phone.
“She is in distress, she’s panicking. They were sent to the same place they fled from,” Terrezas said.
In a follow-up post, Terrezas said that the family was able to pay for a hotel with their commissary money, adding that a GoFundMe is in the works to assist them. Texas Representative Joaquin Castro, who has been advocating for Nicolás and his family, said that he spoke with the family’s attorney and that they had just $190, in a post on X.
“To unnecessarily deport a sick baby and his entire family is heinous. My staff and I are in contact with Juan’s family. We are laser-focused on tracking them down, holding ICE accountable for this monstrous action, demanding specific details on their whereabouts and wellbeing, and ensuring their safety,” Castro said.
Nicolás had been vomiting and experiencing breathing issues while detained in an ICE facility known for unsanitary conditions, which also had a measles outbreak earlier this month. While the baby was sent to a hospital late Monday night, he was guarded by armed federal agents and released after only one day. His mother had to appear before an immigration judge the same day, where she was told they would be deported. Now Nicolás and his family have to fend for themselves.
Bigotry and racism pure and simple. It was once illegal in the US. But under Stephen Miller and tRump it is flourishing and supported. We must fight for acceptance and tolereance for those who are not white. So many gains since the 1960s are being erased illegally. Imagain being a kid, a preteen and having a bunch of masked men stop you and threaten you. Hey we keep being told that ICE is going after the worst of the worst to protect the public. Tell me what horrific crime could that child have done that would harm the public? According to ICE, he was not white and that is dangerous enough to the white racists who make up ICE and support them. Hugs
“The government’s decision is deeply disturbing and is just the latest example of the Trump administration targeting the LGBTQ+ community.”
John Russell (He/Him)February 18, 2026, 11:07 am EST
After elected officials raised a Pride flag on a temporary flagpole, activists raise the flag on the permanent flagpole at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City Feb. 12, 2026. Thousands gathered at the monument to see the flag raised after President Donald Trump had ordered the flag to be removed earlier in the week. | Seth Harrison/The Journal News / USA TODAY NETWORK
The Trump administration violated federal law when it removed the LGBTQ+ Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument in New York City, according to a lawsuit filed by several nonprofit groups on Tuesday.
The lawsuit, led by the Gilbert Baker Foundation — which honors the artist who created the original, eight-striped rainbow Pride flag in the 1970s — alleges that the administration’s “arbitrary and capricious” removal of flag earlier this month violates the Administrative Procedures Act and that the administration “misinterpreted” its own policies as a pretext for the flag’s removal.
“The policies the government says require removing the Pride flag expressly permit the [National Parks Service] to fly other flags that provide historical context to national monuments—which is precisely what the NPS official Pride flag did at Stonewall for many years,” the lawsuit states.
As the New York Times notes, an NPS-sanctioned Pride flag that has for years flown in Christopher Park, the site of the Stonewall Monument in New York’s Greenwich Village, was removed sometime during the night of February 8 with no notice or explanation. NPS later cited new guidance issued by the Trump administration in January mandating that “only the U.S. flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags are flown on NPS-managed flagpoles, with limited exceptions.”
But according to the lawsuit, neither the Department of the Interior policy on flag displays nor the administration’s January directive require the removal of the Pride flag.
“The Policy permits officials to ‘authorize the flying of flags and pennants, other than [U.S. and DOI flags], as appropriate, provided flags and flagpole space are available for this purpose” and “the Directive provides an exemption for flags that ‘provide historical context,’” according to the complaint. “Under the policies that they are purporting to be implementing, Defendants had discretion to allow the Pride flag to be displayed at the Stonewall memorial.”
“This was no careless mistake. The government has not removed other historical flags at other national monuments, most notably Confederate flags,” that lawsuit alleges. “Meanwhile, the assault on Stonewall is the latest example in a long line of efforts by the Trump Administration to target the LGBTQ+ community for discrimination and opprobrium.”
“These actions alone support a strong inference of animus against the LGBTQ+ community and that Defendants’ reasons for removing the flag were pretextual,” the lawsuit argues. “Because Defendants’ reasons were pretextual and based on an impermissible reason, i.e., animus toward the LGBTQ+ community, they are arbitrary and capricious.”
The lawsuit notes that while local lawmakers restored a Pride flag in Christopher Park last week, “Defendants have not restored the NPS-sanctioned Pride flag” and “continue to prohibit its display.”
The Gilbert Baker Foundation and other plaintiffs are asking the court to issue an order requiring the administration to restore the officially sanctioned Pride flag to the monument and to permanently enjoin the administration from removing it without, at minimum, taking into account the effect such a change would have, in accordance with the National Historic Preservation Act.
“The government’s decision is deeply disturbing and is just the latest example of the Trump administration targeting the LGBTQ+ community,” Alexander Kristofcak, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said according to Courthouse News Service. “At best, the government misread its regulations. At worst, the government singled out the LGBTQ+ community. Either way, its actions are unlawful.”
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A 5-year-old girl detained in Dilley drew herself and her family trapped in a cage.Credit: Courtesy / Eric Lee
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
John Russell (He/Him)February 18, 2026, 11:07 am ESTAfter elected officials raised a Pride flag on a temporary flagpole, activists raise the flag on the permanent flagpole at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City Feb. 12, 2026. Thousands gathered at the monument to see the flag raised after President Donald Trump had ordered the flag to be removed earlier in the week. | Seth Harrison/The Journal News / USA TODAY NETWORK
Scottie's Playtime 