Leqaa Kordia, 32, attended her asylum hearing via webcam on Thursday, Oct. 23. The blue light of the monitor displayed multiple windows framing her lawyer, the judge, and the government prosecutor. Her team laid out an argument it had made multiple times already: If Kordia, who is Palestinian, 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.
She attended the Webex hearing from the crowded women’s wing of Prairieland Detention Center in North Texas, where she’s been detained for over 220 days. Immigration and Customs Enforcement initially arrested her for overstaying a student visa and participating in a pro-Palestine protest at Columbia University. But her continued detention has been the result of additional allegations from the Department of Homeland Security, 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.
Kordia has been granted bond — twice — by an immigration judge who deemed the evidence against her insufficient, and determined that she isn’t a threat to the community or a flight risk.
Yet, the Trump administration has repeatedly maneuvered to keep her detained.
Under past presidential administrations, Kordia likely would have been free to carry out her immigration case from the comfort of her home, according to her legal team. That, however, has changed as the Trump administration has used previously extreme measures like overnight transfers and automatic stays to overrule judges and carry out an aggressive anti-immigration agenda.
Ward Sakeik, a fellow stateless Palestinian who became friends with Kordia while they were both held in Prairieland, was detained while returning from her honeymoon. DHS argued that she wasn’t a U.S. citizen and traveled over international waters as grounds for detention, despite an order of supervision allowing her to stay in the U.S.
Sakeik was detained for five months.
The treatment of Palestinians and those who have spoken out about the war in Gaza has been particularly stark as President Donald Trump came into office declaring protesters anti-semitic and supporters of terrorists.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and legal U.S. resident who gained prominence as the first person arrested for protesting at Columbia University in 2024, was detained at LaSalle Detention Center in Louisiana for 104 days before his release in June. In September, a judge ordered that he be deported to Syria or Algeria for failing to disclose information on a green card application and for being a security risk; his legal team has continued to fight the decision.
But unlike Sakeik and Kahlil, Kordia is still languishing in detention.
“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. “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.”
Following a request for comment, DHS provided a statement to The Barbed Wire:
“On March 13, 2025, HSI Newark arrested Leqaa Kordia, from the West Bank (Palestine), for immigration violations related to overstaying her expired student visa. She violated the terms of her student visa. Previously, in April 2024, Kordia was arrested by local law enforcement for her involvement in pro-Hamas protests at Columbia University in New York City. [sic]
“Korida was also found to be providing financial support to individuals living in nations hostile to the U.S. [sic]
“On August 28, a judge granted Korida [sic] bond. On September 11, DHS filed a stay to the Board of Immigration Appeals to ensure that she is not released from ICE custody during the appeal process.”
Kordia’s lawyers have called her “the last one standing.” Muslim community leader Imam Omar Suleiman called her “the forgotten prisoner,” in an op-ed published by Mondoweiss.
Yet, Kordia has begun to make herself known. In recent weeks, her case has been picked up by the Associated Press, The Intercept, and the New Yorker.
“I am not forgotten by my people,” Kordia said in a statement to The Barbed Wire. “I do agree, though, that there are a lot of people here that the outside world doesn’t know about. I was one of them.”
Kordia’s reason for speaking with The Barbed Wire and other outlets, she said, is the same one that brought her to the protest at Columbia in the first place.
“We deserve to live in free land,” Kordia said of Palestinians. “I’m going to be always advocating for their rights and my civil rights as long as I live.”
‘The Racism Underlying All of This Is Just So Blatant’
Kordia was born in Jerusalem and grew up in the nearby West Bank city of Ramallah, living with her father after her parents were divorced. She came to the United States in 2016 on a tourist visa to visit her mom, who is a U.S. citizen and lives in Paterson, New Jersey. She took the opportunity to enroll in an English program, first at Uceda Paterson and later at Bergen County Career Advancement Training, and she got a student visa.
Later, Kordia’s mother filed a visa petition for her to remain in the U.S. as a family member of a citizen. The petition was approved though a visa wasn’t yet available. That’s when, in 2022, Kordia said she withdrew from school — a violation of her student visa — after receiving bad advice from a teacher-turned-friend.
“I dropped out of school thinking that, ‘Now I have a lawful status in the United States.’ I thought that was enough for me to stay legally,” she said. “Unfortunately, I overstayed, but not intentionally.”
Outside of school, Kordia took care of her mom and half-brother, who has mental disabilities, according to her lawyers and court records. She stayed in touch with relatives in Gaza, and was distraught after Israel’s military offensive following the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023 by Hamas. She’s since lost around 175 family members who have died from what the U.N. has found to be a genocide.
Wanting to do something for her family, Kordia said she took to the streets to protest. She attended several, including one in D.C. in January 2024 calling for a ceasefire.
In April 2024, Kordia was arrested with 100 other protesters at Columbia University. The charges were dismissed and sealed.
That was the end of it — until Trump’s inauguration. In his first few days, the president issued an executive order directing agencies to find ways to deport pro-Palestinian activists.
In March, immigration agents began questioning Kordia’s mother and uncle, according to court records, and requested the sealed records from New York police. HSI also put traces on her WhatsApp account and subpoenaed Western Union records. Kordia got a lawyer, then voluntarily met with ICE. She was arrested and taken from New Jersey to Prairieland.
Kordia has been in Prairieland ever since, as DHS has taken one rare move after the next.
In April, DHS argued in immigration court that Kordia was a danger to the public and had ties to terrorism. Their argument hinged on payments Kordia had sent to family in Gaza. However, the judge found no evidence that the remittance payments were connected to terrorism and ordered her release on $20,000 bond.
In what her attorneys described in court records as “a departure from prior agency practice,” DHS appealed the bond decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals and also exercised an automatic stay — keeping her in detention “despite her lack of criminal history and the agency’s own rating of her as low risk.”
“The racism underlying all of this is just so blatant,” said Sarah Sherman-Stokes, Kordia’s immigration lawyer and a professor at Boston University’s immigrants’ rights clinic. “I think the implication that doing something that immigrants do every single day in this country, and frankly, that keeps, like the global economy afloat — that is sending remittances to their families and people they love — suggesting that that is some kind of mysterious or dangerous act I think is deeply racist and Islamophobic.”
In tandem with bond proceedings, Kordia’s legal team filed a habeas petition arguing that her First Amendment rights and her right to due process had been violated. In June, a magistrate judge agreed, but a district judge sent it back to the magistrate to hear further arguments.
In August, the Board of Immigration Appeals also sent the case back to an immigration judge for further fact-finding on the remittance payments.
“We provided, basically, an affidavit from everyone to whom she has sent money, with each person explaining, ‘She sent me money because I needed surgery,’ ‘She sent me money because I couldn’t afford my bills,’ ‘She sent me money to buy gifts for her nieces,’” Sherman-Stokes told The Barbed Wire.
Each family member also attested that they aren’t a member of Hamas or any other terrorist organization.
In September, the judge again ruled that the government didn’t have enough evidence to hold her in detention. And DHS appealed again, and again filed for an emergency stay to prevent her release, which the Board of Immigration Appeals granted.
‘More Vulnerable’
At her most recent asylum hearing, Kordia’s team contested deportation on the grounds of her safety. She now awaits the judge’s decision. Her lawyers estimate that may come in November, though that’s uncertain, given the repeated legal pushback from the prosecution.
Even compared to other pro-Palestinian protesters who have been detained by the Trump administration — including Khalil and eight others mentioned in Kordia’s habeas petition — Kordia’s case stands out.
“I think she is in some ways more vulnerable. She’s not a student at Columbia,” said Sherman-Stokes. “She’s just a young woman who happens to be of Palestinian descent, trying to live her life in Paterson, New Jersey.”
Sherman-Stokes believes that “DHS wants Leqaa to give up and accept removal,” so the administration can celebrate it as a win. “I fear that it will deter others from speaking out about things that they care about and things that they believe in,” she said, “and I think that’s really scary.”
As litigation continues, Kordia remains singularly focused on raising awareness of the ongoing genocide in Palestine, which could have already claimed over 680,000 lives, according to a UN briefing. Israel has killed almost 100 Palestinians and wounded over 200 since the most recent ceasefire brokered by the U.S. earlier this month, according to reporting from Al Jazeera.
“I’m trying my best to shed the light on what’s happening in Palestine in general, and specifically the Gaza genocide. The occupation, mass arrests and everything,” Kordia said. “When I chose to go to the protest it was my way of shedding the light on what’s happening to my people, my family, beloved Palestine.”
To Kordia’s team, the lengths to which the Trump administration has gone to keep her detained amounts to silencing dissent — and should concern anyone who wants to voice disagreement with the government.
“If a young Palestinian woman cannot show up and mourn the loss of her family and celebrate her Palestinian identity in a demonstration with other people, then to me we’ve lost the game on civil society,” Fife said.
“Leqaa’s confinement is a symbol of what the state can do when they disagree with the message you’re announcing.”