Twice the Judge Ordered His Release

Akram Mahmoud Omar, seventy seven, who has lived in the United States for fifty years, survived a heart attack in ICE detention. Ten days after a court ordered his release, the agency seized him again and tried to deport him to Israel in violation of the court order.

Less than two weeks ago, a federal judge sharply ordered the U.S. immigration agency ICE to release a grandfather from Louisiana who had suffered a heart attack while in its custody. Ten days after his release, ICE seized the man again and attempted to place the still recovering patient on a deportation flight the next morning. It is the story of an agency overriding the courts and of a seventy seven year old man caught in between.

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The man’s name is Akram Mahmoud Omar and he is seventy seven years old. He was born in Palestine before the State of Israel existed and came to the United States in 1975 as a lawful permanent resident, where he lived for half a century. Last October, during one of the regular check ins required of him, ICE unexpectedly arrested him in Mississippi and soon transferred him to a detention facility known as Camp 57, located inside Louisiana’s notorious Angola State Prison.

The strain caused by the poor conditions there contributed to his heart attack, according to the detention complaint filed in April, which was followed by open heart surgery. On May 29, Federal Judge Brian Jackson in Baton Rouge found that ICE had violated Omar’s constitutional rights by unlawfully detaining him and denying him the opportunity to prepare for an orderly departure, and ordered his immediate release. It was unbelievable, the order stated, that ICE simultaneously considered this man both a flight risk and a priority for removal despite undisputed facts. Since October 28, 2025, Omar had remained in detention for a full seven months with no end in sight.

There appeared to be no obvious reason. ICE had long known about two minor nonviolent convictions, one from 2005 and another from 2022, yet Omar had lived for years under agency supervision and attended every required check in. Jackson emphasized that ICE must follow its own rules. If the agency intended to deport him, it had to notify him in advance, provide a reason, allow him the opportunity for an orderly departure, and conduct a noncustodial interview. The court also ordered ICE to facilitate communication with Omar’s doctors and family so that his necessary medical treatment could continue without interruption after release.

After his release, Omar appeared on the first Wednesday in June for his regular check in and was told his next appointment would not be until December. But last Friday, June 5, he received a letter instructing him to report Monday morning, June 8, to an agency office. His attorney Ken Mayeaux immediately wrote to the office in Bossier City, where Omar lives, stating that any deportation attempt in June would be a direct violation of the court’s order and instructing his client not to comply. Instead, officers came to Omar’s house on Monday and arrested him again. His wife immediately called Mayeaux. Only hours later did the family learn that he was being transported nearly two hours away to a staging location for deportation flights and would be placed on a plane to Israel the next morning.

His attorney later wrote in the emergency filing that his greatest concern was his client’s health. Omar was still recovering from his April heart attack and surgery. His wife had told the arresting officer that she had planned to take him to a heart specialist that very day and that he could barely move. A physician was prepared to testify, according to the filing, that the approximately fourteen hour flight without medical clearance raised serious concerns about Omar’s health, assuming he survived the flight at all.

The way ICE proceeded makes clear the extent of the disregard. The government lied to Omar, the emergency motion filed on June 8 stated. It told him and his family that he would not need to report again to Enforcement and Removal Operations until December, and now it was attempting to remove him from the country within hours. The agency did not notify his attorney until Omar was already back in custody, and only then did he learn of the travel documents and the planned deportation. Even then, according to the filing, ICE did not allow Omar to speak with his attorney immediately. The notice turned the court’s order into a mockery.

Once again, it took an order from Judge Jackson directing his immediate release and warning the agency against any further deportation attempt. ICE was ordered to release Omar from custody without delay and neither detain him again nor remove him from the country while his emergency motion remained pending. Around seven o’clock Monday evening, officers returned him home, the family relieved but shaken. They are all completely traumatized, Mayeaux said.

On June 8, 2026, Judge Brian A. Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana ordered that Akram Mahmoud Omar be immediately released once again from ICE detention. The order followed Omar’s allegation that he had been detained again despite a judicial release order already issued on May 29, 2026, and that authorities intended to deport him within hours. The court also ordered ICE to immediately provide Omar access to a telephone so that he could contact his family and attorneys and arrange transportation home. Until Omar’s emergency motion is resolved, the U.S. government may neither detain him again nor remove him from the United States. In addition, the government must provide the court with all travel documents and deportation plans and demonstrate compliance with the order within twenty four hours. Judge Jackson also scheduled another hearing for June 24, 2026.

ICE denies all of it. The agency complies with all court orders, spokesperson Angelina Vicknair said, and any claim that a judicial order had been ignored was categorically false. The basis for Ms. Vicknair’s statements remained her own secret. Federal courts, however, have increasingly dealt with apparent violations of their orders by ICE, said Bridget Pranzatelli, an attorney with the National Immigration Project familiar with the case. This cruelty and this disregard for federal courts are the rule, not the exception. The court reviewed the entire record and issued a well reasoned decision explicitly granting protections to this very old, very sick man, and ICE disregarded it. The conduct fits the way the government has used extreme measures against Palestinians, Pranzatelli said, because Omar was born in Palestine before the State of Israel existed, the country to which authorities were now trying to deport him.

The letter last week made everyone suspicious, and yet hardly anyone could believe that people could be this heartless and cruel toward a sick seventy seven year old man. But with ICE, anything seems possible. The past months have shown that, and they tried.

So twice a judge had to order the same thing because the first time was not enough. That is what is unsettling about this case, not only the harshness shown toward a sick old man, but what that harshness reveals about the law. A court order is only a piece of paper as long as those charged with enforcing it decide to respect it, and an agency that insists it follows every order while acting against one places itself above the law it claims to serve. A man who survived a heart attack was brought to the edge of a flight he might not have survived, away from the country where he had lived for fifty years and into one that did not exist when he was born. They took not only his freedom but also his farewell, the orderly departure the court had granted him. That he ended up back home is not a victory but a pause for breath, and his family’s relief cannot be separated from the fear that next Friday another letter might arrive.

To be continued .....