Thirty-three-year-old Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia will soon mark one year trapped in ICE detention. Kordia, who was born in East Jerusalem, first came to police attention when she was arrested during the 2024 Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia University. Those charges were dropped, but Kordia was later detained at routine immigration check-in in New Jersey. Federal immigration officers said her student visa had expired, and sent her to an ICE detention center in North Texas, where she's been incarcerated ever since. Under what she describes as torturous conditions, she suffered her first-ever seizure, which led to a multiday hospitalization. For three days, ICE refused to inform her family and legal team about her status and whereabouts. "She's been a relatively healthy person physically until she was detained … [but] her health is at great risk if she remains in custody," says Kordia's attorney Sarah Sherman-Stokes.
Kordia has lost more than 200 family members to Israel's genocide in Gaza, and a judge has ruled that she cannot be repatriated to Israel because of risk of persecution there, but the U.S. government has refused to release her on bond while her legal battle crawls along. "Leqaa should never have been detained," in the first place, says Sherman-Stokes.
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