A Columbia University protester who has been deemed a political prisoner by Texas Democrats who’ve called for her release from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center was hospitalized over the weekend due to a seizure, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman, was taken to Prairieland Detention Center in North Texas last March. The Barbed Wire wrote about Kordia and her case in October.
At that point, Kordia had been detained for 220 days in Prairieland.
As of Monday, Kordia has been detained for more than 325 days.
State Rep. Salman Bhojani, a Democrat from Euless, has also advocated for Kordia’s release and spoken about the harsh conditions she has endured at the detention center. Bhojani and other lawmakers, several of Kordia’s family members, and an attorney from the Texas Civil Rights Project, were turned away from a previously-scheduled visit with Kordia on Jan. 30.
On that day, Bhojani told the press that Kordia’s lack of access to halal meals and proper heating — in “suffocating conditions” amid more than 60 detainees in a dorm built for 20 individuals — has meant that she’s developed dizziness. He said she had been running “a high fever for several days.”
A week later, Kordia’s cousin, Hamza Abushaban, told The Dallas Morning News that he heard Friday morning Kordia had fallen and hit her head in the detention center, causing a seizure, but couldn’t get information on her condition until Saturday morning. Abushaban said Kordia’s health had deteriorated last week when he visited the detention center.
She was admitted to a hospital for further evaluation on Friday around 8:45 p.m., the Department of Homeland Security told the newspaper.
“Her admission to the hospital was made out of an abundance of caution to ensure her health and safety,” the department said in a statement to the Morning News. “The hospital is monitoring her condition and ICE will continue to ensure she receives proper medical care.”
According to the newspaper, her family and attorneys have received limited information about her condition and have not been able to establish contact with Kordia despite multiple attempts.
Bhojani told The Dallas Morning News that it took 24 hours for Kordia’s legal team to confirm she’d been hospitalized, calling the facility “a black box.”
An attorney for Kordia told the newspaper that lawyers had called 16 hospitals in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, to no avail in locating her.
“Every single hospital we called said she was not there,” said Sarah Sherman-Stokes, an attorney with the Boston University School of Law Immigrants Rights Clinic. “We’re pretty despairing.”
Abushaban told The New York Times in May that his cousin had already lost about 50 pounds in DHS custody.
Kordia has been detained by immigration authorities since March 14, 2025, when she was grabbed at a routine immigration interview in Paterson, New Jersey, thrown into an unmarked van, and flown 1,545 miles away to Prairieland in Alvarado.
While ICE initially arrested Kordia for overstaying a student visa, and participating in a pro-Palestine protest at Columbia University, her continued detention has been the result of additional allegations from the 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.
As The Barbed Wire previously reported, 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.
“She was lifeless,” Abushaban told The Dallas Morning News. “She literally feels like she’s slowly dying. And then … four or five days later, this happens.”
Lawmakers, family members, and Kordia herself have objected to the conditions at Prairieland Detention Center. In a petition for release filed last August, Kordia said that the guards routinely disrespected her religious beliefs, rarely provided halal food, and that the facilities were “regularly infested with cockroaches, spiders, other bugs, and, at least once, a snake.”
On Jan. 30, Bhojani said that the detention center officials denied them entry, claiming that there was a large protest outside the facility, which Bhojani said was “not true.” The attempted visit came during freezing temperatures in North Texas, which Bhojani said exacerbated the poor conditions at the detention center.
“Leqaa has been forced to sleep on the floor without adequate heat and clothing to keep her warm,” Bhojani said.
Thirty four Texas lawmakers, including Bhojani, sent a letter to Kirsti Noem, the DHS secretary, on Jan. 27, demanding Kordia’s release and calling her a “political prisoner.”
Omar Suleiman, president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, has spoken publicly about visits with Kordia and the conditions she faces in Prairieland.
Suleiman responded to news of Kordia’s hospitalization in a post on X Sunday.
“We can’t find Leqaa Kordia in any hospital. This is abduction upon abduction,” Suleiman wrote on X. “Please help us get the word out and pray for her. She truly is a light being kept in dark dungeons.”
Her lawyers have argued against the deportation of Kordia, who was raised in the West Bank, to Gaza. Her attorneys say that deportation would put Kordia in the hands of the Israeli government that has killed almost 200 members of her family.
Other Texas detention centers have faced scrutiny for reports of poor conditions, including inadequate medical care and inedible food. Last week, the Dilley Immigration Processing Center near San Antonio — where many hundreds of children, including a 2-month-old infant are being held — reported a measles outbreak.
In a January essay published by USA Today, Kordia wrote of other women detained with her at the Prairieland Detention Center, many of whom she said have serious illnesses or cannot afford legal representation.
“Ours is a daily battle for basic dignity,” Kordia wrote. “None of us deserve to be treated this way. All of our voices deserve to be heard.”