Tag: Ayman Soliman

The Line in the Sand: Sheriff Jones holding Ayman Soliman in the Butler County Jail

It is probably the most crucial topic in the world at the moment: the question of police and their impact on a prosperous society.  It just so happens that I had an excellent example of the effects of good police work in my own backyard with Sheriff Jones and the Butler County Sheriff’s department, as they were the center of controversy, as the very controversial inmate, Ayman Soliman, was being held at the Butler County Jail awaiting his trial date for his asylum case.  Radical groups have pressured Governor DeWine to have Soliman released from the Butler County jail.  Soliman has been the cause of considerable controversy, and it’s interesting to see who has rallied to his cause.  Rioters tried to shut down a bridge in downtown Cincinnati over Soliman’s arrest.  And at the Butler County jail, there have been protestors attempting to block roads, which has led to the arrest of several stringy-haired socialist types from the radical left.  Soliman himself, as Sheriff Jones told me when I sat down with him to discuss this case, indicated that a significant amount of pretension about Ayman Soliman has emerged while he has been in jail, a self-importance that has led to trouble, inspiring disciplinary action.  Soliman had been a Muslim chaplain from Egypt at the Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati, where he was arrested during a routine check-in.  Soliman had his asylum revoked in early June 2025, and on July 9th, after 3 hours of questioning by ICE officials, he was arrested and put into the Butler County Jail under an ICE contract.  Homeland Security, under the new enforcement guidelines of Kristi Noem, confirmed that Soliman was on the FBI terror watchlist for a direct connection to the Muslim Brotherhood.  And that this background was triggered years earlier when he tried to get a job at the Oregon Department of Corrections in Umatilla. 

When Sheriff Jones and I spoke, his understanding of his job is to follow the law, not to make it.  And based on Soliman’s past, there was a lot in it that was very sketchy.  He might be innocent.  It might be unfair.  At best, the case looks to be that the Obama administration and that of Biden were very loose on crime and allowed for controversial immigrants like Ayman Soliman to live in America illegally as a Muslim religious leader, where he holds an MA in Islamic Studies from Egypt and has pursued advanced degrees, including an MDiv in Islamic studies and Muslim Chaplaincy and a PhD in Islamic Studies.  During the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, Soliman participated in student protests and worked as a freelance journalist, during which he was arrested multiple times by the Egyptian authorities.  After being beaten and tortured in custody in Egypt, he fled to America seeking asylum and had been living in the background for many years, leading up to that questioning in Blue Ash, Ohio, before landing in the Butler County Jail.  The point of the matter is that under Trump’s administration, specifically the much-improved Homeland Security under Kristi Noem and the ICE enforcement of Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar,  Ayman Soliman was high on the list of cases to deal with for a reason.  And from Sheriff Jones’ perspective, he has to trust the federal law that put that inmate in his jail.  He can’t allow a mob to persuade him in his police work, and since the arrest of Ayman Soliman, that has been the clear intention of the radical left to lobby Governor DeWine in the hopes of putting pressure on Sheriff Jones to release the Muslim spiritual leader. 

So, the topic is why good police work is important.  Why federalizing the police in Washington, D.C. was a good thing and why Chicago needs to do the same.  Why is it great that the Trump administration blew up a drug trafficking boat from Venezuela?  And why Sheriff Jones was all that stood between chaos and law at the Butler County Jail in holding this suspicious person that the Trump administration flagged on a terror watch list because of his background with the Muslim Brotherhood front group Al-Gam’iyya al-Shar’iyya, an Egyptian nonprofit providing medical aid and charity services.  Recently, a letter was presented to Governor DeWine with 1,100 signatures on July 25, 2025, urging his intervention in the Butler County jail. However, Jones was quick to dismiss any executive orders that DeWine might attempt to initiate, with an open refusal to listen to the governor.  Jones instead stated that he worked for the people of Butler County, who could re-hire or fire him at their discretion.  And that they were the highest authority, not a state governor, which has shocked many people.  But Sheriff Jones, and this isn’t the only occasion, has stood firm under tremendous pressure.  So this was indeed a powerful story that needed to be examined.  And why was Butler County at the center of this international incident?  I personally attribute this to the six terms in office that Sheriff Jones has had, as well as the stability of law enforcement that has existed under his leadership.  The Butler County Sheriff’s department, I think, is one of the best in the country, and Sheriff Jones is undoubtedly one of the best that there is anywhere, and because of that fabulous police presence, Butler County as a region has thrived in ways that are unique in the world. 

I consider the Butler County Jail to be a well-run business.  I’ve visited there several times, I’ve toured the jail, eaten the food, and observed the booking process.  It’s undoubtedly one of the best jail systems in the state of Ohio and is clearly one of the best in the country.  And saying all that, it’s one of the best in the world.  Ayman Soliman should consider himself fortunate that he’s in the Butler County Jail until his next immigration court date set for December 15, 2025, and there are other legal challenges to be pursued in October.  There are numerous complications, but what it has all revealed is the kind of people working in the background to undermine U.S. law. If not for strong figures like Sheriff Jones, chaos would be running rampant.  Having him at the center of this international story is very beneficial for the overall Trump administration’s objectives of cleaning up America from the kind of people trying to destroy it in the background.  Seeing the liberal groups and the communist organizations that have rallied to the defense of an Islamic holy man attached to a third-tier terror watch list has been unnerving because Sheriff Jones’ adherence to law and order has forced those voices to reveal too much about themselves.  And to show the rest of the world how hostile to peace and Western civilization that they really are, including popular publications as Rolling Stone magazine.  Knowing Sheriff Jones as I do, I know he shares with me a genuine desire to have a law-and-order society, especially on the topic of illegal immigration.  He and I have been advocates for better border security for over 20 years.  And finally, with the Trump administration, there is someone committed to the cause.  And Sheriff Jones is undoubtedly ready to step in and do what he can to make that border security successful.  And it was great that he drew that line in the sand under tremendous pressure from the Governor’s office in Ohio to push chaos away and hold the line.  This has a lot to do with why so many people enjoy success in Butler County, because there are great police officers there who keep the evil people hiding in the shadows.  And under the Trump administration, they are finally willing to enter those shadows and arrest the characters hiding there.  And there will be a lot more good to come.  However, for now, Sheriff Jones has Ayman Soliman in the Butler County Jail, which is beneficial for all of us, including him. It’s much better than the treatment he will get in Egypt for reasons they understand best.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Beat the Hell Out of Them: Crushing the socialist protestors at the Roebling Bridge in Cincinnati

As I said, the ICE agents who had rocks thrown at them in California, detaining illegal aliens from that pot farm, should have shot them.  They had every right to do so.  So I was thrilled to see that the Covington, Kentucky police physically bloodied a bunch of stringy-haired protestors as they tried to close the Roebling Suspension Bridge over a protest of Ayman Soliman, the former Cincinnati Children’s Hospital chaplain, detained by ICE on July 9th, 2025.  For some ridiculous reason, someone has told these loser socialists that shutting down highways and bridges was a thing they could do to express free speech.  It is not.  And certainly not in my town. I use that bridge all the time, and it should not be closed down by a bunch of protestors cheering on illegal activity.  I have no tolerance for it.  We hire law enforcement to enforce laws.  And when the protestors dug in and started getting pushy, the Covington Police beat the hell out of those protestors and arrested them like the scrappy losers that they are.  It’s one thing to see these things happening in some far away place like California, where their politics has fallen off the edge of the earth with liberalism.  It’s quite another to see something like that happen in the heartland city of Cincinnati, not in my town.  I want to see our highways, bridges, and sidewalks open at all costs, despite the impediments of protestors.  They do not have the right to shut down anything in protest, and it’s about time they are taught a lesson about impeding traffic.  When it comes to using violence to maintain law and order, I’m 100% for it.  As the videos of this violence at the bridge went viral, I was very proud of the Covington, Kentucky, police department. 

The protestors crossed the line when they tried to stop a black SUV driven by an out-of-town tourist, as the insurgents were banging on the hood and vandalizing the vehicle as it attempted to push through the crowd.  Police issued warnings and tried to be as kind as possible, but they ended up arresting 15 of the 100 or so protesters at the site, including two CityBeat journalists, Madeline Fening and Lucas Griffith.  The charges include felony rioting, unlawful assembly, failure to disperse, obstructing a highway, criminal mischief, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest.  The Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America claimed that the police “violently broke up” the protest, alleging some of the arrestees were beaten and required medical treatment.  An attorney for the miscreants, Benjamin Pugh, argued that the police escalated the situation and did not give sufficient time to disperse.  So that is the cast of characters involved, and I have no sympathy for the CityBeat journalists.  As I have said about them for many decades, they exist to breed these kinds of losers in our youth culture, so they are as guilty of why those protestors thought they could get away with this kind of thing in the first place, as anybody.  There’s plenty of bad to go around, and it’s good that the Covington Police did not allow these individuals to embarrass our city of Greater Cincinnati in front of the nation.  The message we want to send to all these socialist and communist sympathizers is zero tolerance for their view of the world.  That’s where we are these days, as I have been saying for a long time.  These aren’t just Democrats with differing political views.  These are people who want to overthrow our society, which is why they are upset at the ICE deportations, because all those illegal immigrants are part of their strategy to destroy our law and order society.

However, here is a statement for attorneys like Mr. Pugh, who involved himself in this case: the public’s right to free egress exceeds the right of one individual to express their free speech.  People can say and hold whatever opinion they want about anything.  But they don’t have the right to force someone else to have that opinion.  And stopping traffic is an expression of a free speech opinion by force.  The protesters are saying, ‘Join me in my opinion; otherwise, I’m not going to let you use this bridge or travel down this highway.’  Time is an essential thing, and people in a free society cannot have others impose restrictions on their movement to coerce their opinions politically.  The protesters could have written an article, or spoken on YouTube or TikTok about the deportation of the Egyptian Ayman Soliman.  However, they did not have the right to block traffic to get attention or put their hands on the car of someone trying to cross the bridge.  This Marxist notion of damaging private property to communicate political opinions just isn’t going to fly.  We are a private property country.  A mob of losers does not get to override every principle of personal freedom that we have in our society, and one of the fundamental rights that we have is the right to egress.  The right to move around unimpeded and the freedom to enjoy our lives.  That’s why the bridge exists, so that people can travel from one place to another.  That’s why the roads exist.  A protester does not have the right to take that freedom away from people to force their opinions on an issue, due to having no other option but violence to get their point across. 

Once the protestors made a move to close the road, the Convington Police had a right and obligation to remove them and restore that freedom of egress.  There is no group sentiment, such as the Ignite Peace Cincy group, that has the right to close down any roads or even make someone walk around them on a sidewalk.  Any imposition on the personal freedoms of anybody warrants a violent removal of that impediment.  There is no right to Free Speech, which means people who don’t share those opinions have to be inconvenienced by any method.  People ultimately have a choice, and if that choice is removed from them, including the option to listen to socialist protestors or not, or to read that socialist social magazine, CityBeat, or not, the frustrated advocates of a political position don’t get to threaten free people and their private property in any way at all.  Especially trying to stop them from crossing a bridge and vandalizing their property, as if the group mob decided what was valuable socially, or what was acceptable.  And in this case, Ayman Soliman might have been a nice guy who fled persecution in his homeland in 2014 for his work as a freelance journalist covering the Arab Spring.  He was granted asylum in 2018, but that was revoked in June of 2025, leading to his arrest by ICE on July 9th.  He was a Muslim chaplain at Cincinnati Children’s and a board member at the Clifton Mosque, so a lot is happening with him that aligns with the profile of the Democrat Party and the way they want to shape our country politically.  But when people don’t want to hear what they have to say, they don’t get to take away choice from people, so that they do.  Any attempt to do that warrants violence against the protestors attempting it.   And no compassion for individual circumstances justifies anything done at the Roebling bridge, other than the police shutting it down and arresting with violence the perpetrators.  And I would have fully supported much more violence.  Because when I want to use that bridge, which happens often, I don’t want stringy-haired hippie socialists blocking the way.   Get them off the road, by any means necessary.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707