Late last year, immigration authorities allowed Islam Aly to fly from Orlando to his native Egypt after the death of his father. But they didn’t let him come back to Florida.
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Instead, Aly, a 40-year-old green card applicant and a former University of Central Florida student, was arrested Dec. 23 after arriving at Philadelphia International Airport and turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It’s not clear why ICE detained Aly, and an agency spokesperson did not respond to messages seeking an explanation.
It wasn’t until three weeks later that he sent word to his friends of his whereabouts: the notorious Moshannon Valley Processing Center in central Pennsylvania, an ICE detention facility local activists have pushed to close amid reports of medical neglect of detainees — including Aly — and a recent hunger strike.
Ever since, Aly’s friends and political activists in Pennsylvania have demanded his release, especially after he was diagnosed with Stage 3B chronic kidney disease during a medical exam in January while in ICE custody — a diagnosis he was not told until two months later, his friends say.
A GoFundMe page created to cover his legal expenses and medical care has raised more than $10,000.
But on top of managing an illness his supporters fear will exacerbate without proper medical treatment, he now faces deportation after an immigration judge on May 12 denied his green card application.
“I committed no felonies in my entire life,” Aly said in a statement via his friend Mark Barfield, former vice-chair of Florida’s Libertarian Party. “I’ve never been arrested or charged with a crime. I never showed up in a courtroom over any criminal activity before this year. The only court I’ve ever been in is this immigration court.”
Aly arrived to the U.S. on a student visa in 2013 and enrolled at UCF, where he graduated in 2016 with a master’s degree in electrical engineering. State licensing records list him as an engineering intern as of April 2025.
“Here’s a fellow who did quite well at a university in Egypt,” said Barfield. “He tells us that he was attracted to several universities over here, but he chose UCF because of its reputation and climate, and this is how the United States treats that caliber a person.”
His friends, who know him as “Izzy,” said Aly is a cosplayer and surrounds himself with a community he met through conventions and online gaming. His passion for games led him to start Kronotiq Media, an Orlando-based media production firm founded in 2016, through which he published a card game called Cons Against Our Sanity.
U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services had authorized him to leave for Egypt to settle his late father’s affairs, according to Barfield. While green card applicants generally risk canceling the process by leaving, authorities can allow them to temporarily exit the country under specific circumstances such as a family emergency.
It’s not clear what changed once he returned. A federal habeas corpus petition filed in the Western District of Pennsylvania remains pending while he appeals his deportation in immigration court. Records in the federal case were not readily accessible online.
His friends told the Orlando Sentinel that at the time of his arrest, he was expected to come home in time for Christmas and had last heard from him as he boarded his plane to return stateside. Then the messages stopped.
“My heart sank at that point,” one friend, Eric Bennett, said of the moment he found out what happened to Aly.
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With his cellphone seized and no way to contact anyone for weeks after he was taken into custody, the life Aly built in Orlando quickly unraveled. His car was repossessed, and in March, a judge issued an order to evict him from his Hunters Creek apartment, according to court records.
Since no one could claim his property — valuables, devices, projects and data gathered over many years — they were auctioned off, said Daria Laycock, another one of his friends. His cat, Mia, was also taken away.
“For us, it was like watching a man’s life fall apart and then trying to pick up the pieces, but we’re not legally tied to this guy,” Laycock said. “I’m not his wife, I’m not his mother, I can’t act on his behalf. It’s been very hopeless.”
Bennett, who met Aly at a convention more than a decade ago, has spoken to him periodically and described Aly’s hopes of reuniting with his loved ones and returning to his life.
“You would think he’d be very down about the situation, and while it’s obvious that he is, the hopeful aspect of him is what really came through,” Bennett said.
Amid the despair, Aly found allies on the outside, who along with friends in Orlando are working to raise awareness of his case along with the plight of others housed at Moshannon. Barfield said Aly has reported blood in his urine among other symptoms, and was placed on a low-sodium renal diet for his condition.
But Aly’s treatment had not been treated until the diagnosis was confirmed by a nephrologist in March, Barfield said. He has since seen an outside doctor several times.
“His medical condition worsens,” Barfield said. “And the medical care he gets from the medical center at Moshannon is just cursory at best and is, in my opinion, mostly just maintaining a life and not really treating the condition.”
News outlets have reported squalid conditions at the facility, from sub-standard medical care to reports of malnourishment among detainees culminating in a hunger strike that ended with its alleged leader being punished. Those reports have been denied by the Department of Homeland Security.
Indivisible Mayday and Indivisible Outcry, two activist organizations in central Pennsylvania, have staged protests outside of Moshannon while demanding officials in Clearfield County cut ties with GEO Group, the private prison company that runs the facility. The most recent protest took place Saturday as two dozen demonstrators, many of whom carrying “Free Izzy” placards, called for the Moshannon’s closure.
Kali McLaughlin, cofounder of Indivisible Outcry, said she has tried to visit Aly after being contacted by his friends in Orlando and hopes to do so again this week.
“Izzy is as American as anybody else, with so many community ties and friend groups and with his interests and everything,” McLaughlin said. “It’s infuriating that people are really making the effort to ‘do everything right’ like everybody wants them to do, and it still doesn’t matter.”
In addition to local activism, Aly’s case caught the eye of the Libertarian Party, the third-largest political party in the U.S., which in April passed a resolution supporting him and others they deem “political captives” detained by ICE.
Despite the support, his friends fear the worst as his health declines.
“He’s still not free yet,” Bennett said. “Will he be freed? Will he die from neglect?”
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