Texas Democrats are accusing President Donald Trump of holding 33-year-old Columbia University protester Leqaa Kordia as a political prisoner, and on Friday called for her release in a frigid press conference outside of Prairieland Detention Center in North Texas.
Kordia, a Palestinian Muslim woman who had lived in Paterson, New Jersey since 2016, has been detained by immigration authorities since March 14, 2025 — when she was grabbed at a routine immigration interview in New Jersey. She was thrown into an unmarked van and flown 1,545 miles away to Prairieland Detention Center in North Texas in Alvarado.
The Barbed Wire wrote about Kordia and her case in October, after she broke her silence to the media following months of detention. At that point, Kordia had been detained for 220 days in Prairieland.
As of Friday, Kordia has been detained for more than 315 days.
Now, as weeks of turmoil have followed the deportation and detainment of young children in Texas — and extrajudicial killing of Americans by federal authorities in Minneapolis — Texas lawmakers are pressuring the Department of Homeland Security to release her.
“Texas House Democrats refuse to allow Trump to create internment camps for his political prisoners in our state,” the legislative caucus posted on X this week.
“This woman is a political prisoner,” the post read. “Leqaa Kordia has been locked in a Texas detention facility for 10 months because she protested.”
Kordia is the last remaining Columbia University protester still in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody following a pro-Palestine protest on the school’s campus.
ICE initially arrested Kordia for overstaying a student visa and participating in the protest, but her continued detention has been the result of additional allegations from DHS, which has claimed money sent to family members in Gaza as proof of terrorism and consulting a lawyer as evidence that she’s a flight risk.
Her protest-related charges have since been dismissed, and Kordia has been granted bond — twice — by an immigration judge who notably deemed the evidence against her insufficient, determining she is neither a threat to the community nor a flight risk.
Despite those developments, she has not been released. Her legal team has argued repeatedly that if Kordia is deported to Israel, she will be placed in the custody of the government that her lawyers say has killed almost 200 members of her family.
Earlier this week, 34 Texas state lawmakers sent a joint letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanding an end to what they called Kordia’s unlawful detainment, condemning the agency and claiming Kordia has been “targeted for her constitutionally protected political speech” advocating for the lives of Palestinians.
“Leqaa has been granted release on a $20,000 bond twice,” stated the letter — was signed by state senators in addition to the House caucus, including Sen. Nathan Johnson, Sen. Molly Cook, and Sen. José Menéndez.
The letter argues that “the federal administration’s ongoing and shameful confinement is part of its broader crackdown on freedom of expression and its criminalization of peaceful protest, undermining the protections of the U.S. Constitution to advance their own authoritarian political agenda.”
“I have never seen another legal context in which the government can detain someone for so long on the basis of so little evidence,” said Travis Fife of Texas Civil Rights Project, who is representing Kordia in a federal habeas corpus case, in a previous interview with The Barbed Wire.
“As someone who has watched a lot of bail hearings and arraignments and plea hearings in some of the most rural parts of the state, it’s been pretty wild and jaw dropping to see just how extraordinary an amount of power the executive has to keep people like Leqaa, who they don’t like, detained,” said Fife.
‘Suffocating Conditions’
On Friday morning’s visit to the facility, lawmakers were turned away — along with Kordia’s legal team and family, said Texas state Rep. Salman Bhojani. Being denied entry to Prairieland raised serious concerns about “transparency, dignity, and accountability,” he said.
“The visit was about Leqaa, checking on her safety and health and sharing her story to the rest of the world,” said Bhojani, who is from Euless and in 2022 was the first Muslim ever elected to the Texas Legislature.
“Leqaa has been forced to sleep on the floor without adequate heat and clothing to keep her warm” as temperatures in Texas have been below freezing in recent days, said Bhojani, calling her treatment “deeply unjust,” “disappointing,” and “absolutely wrong.”
On Friday, the weather in Alvarado was in the 30s, and officials at a 10 a.m. press conference outside Prairieland were wrapped in scarves and heavy jackets.
“She does not even have clothing that fully covers her body,” said Bhojani.
Bhojani said lawmakers were cleared to visit with Kordia in person weeks ago but were turned away “at the last minute” under the rationale that there were 200 protesters outside the facility, which he claimed was “not true.”
“She was misled,” said Bhojani. “Our visit was cancelled because we came to ask hard questions about the reality that is happening inside those walls.”
Hamzah Abushaban, Kordia’s cousin who flew into Texas from Florida for the visit, noted there were only 28 people outside the facility, “half of whom are from the media.”
Bhojani said that Kordia’s lack of access to halal meals and proper heating — in “suffocating conditions” amid cockroaches and more than 60 detainees in a dorm built for 20 individuals — has meant that she’s developed dizziness and is running “a high fever for several days” as Ramadan approaches.
Abushaban told The New York Times in May that his cousin had already lost about 50 pounds in DHS custody.
At the time of Kordia’s arrest, said Abushaban, “she was madly in love with this great country.”
“I don’t think you could have found a more patriotic person,” he said.
“I don’t consider myself a leader or an activist,” Kordia wrote in an opinion piece for USA Today last week. “I am a devout Muslim who is deeply committed to my faith and community. I am a daughter, a sister and a best friend.”
In her essay, as in multiple interviews with news outlets, Kordia said the conditions inside Prairieland are “filthy, overcrowded, and inhumane.”
“For months, I spelt in a plastic shell,” she continued. “Privacy does not exist here.”
“The federal government cannot lock someone up because they don’t like what she said at a protest,” said Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. Gene Wu, in a statement from lawmakers earlier this week.
“For absolutely no legal reason, the Trump administration has detained Leqaa, held her in isolation, denied her the ability to practice her faith, and refused to release her even after a judge ordered bond,” he added.
“This is un-American, illegal political persecution, and it’s happening right in our backyard in Texas.”
Kordia is weeks away from spending a second Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, away from her family, Abushaban told reporters on Friday.