Calls Grow for Release of Palestinian Who Has Been Jailed by ICE Since March

Calls are growing to release Palestinian protester Leqaa Kordia, who was arrested at a 2024 Columbia University Gaza solidarity protest. The charges were dismissed, but when she went to her ICE check-in this past March, she was arrested and immediately sent to the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, where she has been held ever since. Although Columbia University student protesters like Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil have been freed from ICE detention, “her case sort of fell between the cracks,” says Laila El-Haddad, Palestinian writer and journalist from Gaza, who just visited Kordia. El-Haddad also criticizes the Trump administration’s effort to “crack down on any dissent and use immigration law, to weaponize immigration law to silence dissent and to criminalize free speech, especially when that speech relates to Palestine.”

TRANSCRIPT

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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show looking at the growing calls to release a Palestinian woman from New Jersey who has been held in ICE detention in Texas for nearly 10 months. Leqaa Kordia was arrested last year at a Gaza solidarity protest at Columbia University, but the charges were dismissed. Then, when she went to her ICE check-in this past March, she was arrested and immediately sent to the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, where she’s been held ever since. Lawyers from CLEAR and the Texas Civil Rights Project and Boston University School of Law Immigrants’ Rights Clinic are helping on her case.

NPR’s Radio Diaries recently aired part of a phone call between Leqaa Kordia and her cousin Hamzah Abushaban, who talks to her almost every day.

LEQAA KORDIA: I received a call from my mother telling me, “There are people asking for you from the government.” At the beginning, I felt like they were missing a form or something. OK, I’m just going to solve this issue, and then, like, I’ll have my green card soon. But they took my fingerprints and all that. They said, “You’re going to Texas.” I said, “Texas? Like, that’s really far away.” And when I arrived to Texas, the place was overcrowded.

HAMZAH ABUSHABAN: How many people are there with you?

LEQAA KORDIA: So, right now we’re 87, and the capacity of this place is 37. It’s a lot of people sleeping on the floor.

HAMZAH ABUSHABAN: Wow.

LEQAA KORDIA: Yeah. Maybe another word to describe this place: a big bathroom? It’s open. Everything is open. There is no privacy.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Leqaa Kordia, speaking from ICE jail in Texas to her cousin.

So, the New Jersey — Paterson, New Jersey, City Council has just passed a resolution calling for the immediate release of Leqaa, and Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker are also calling for Leqaa Kordia’s release.

For more, we’re joined by Laila El-Haddad, Palestinian journalist from Gaza, media strategist who’s helping to raise awareness about the ongoing detention of Leqaa, and just came back from visiting her in Texas. Laila is the co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced, author of Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Laila. Talk about Leqaa, why she has been held for almost 10 months, after going to her New Jersey ICE check-in.

LAILA EL-HADDAD: Thank you so much for having me, Amy.

That’s sort of the question that everyone is asking. I think partly because her case sort of fell between the cracks. She wasn’t a student or a public-facing activist, per se. She didn’t have those support networks. And her case shares a lot in common — of course, it’s interwoven — with the cases of all the others that we have heard of — Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, Dr. Badar Suri Khan and Rümeysa Öztürk. But it just didn’t get the kind of attention that the other cases got early on, even though — as you summarized earlier, even though two judges have actually called for her release and found that she is not deportable to Israel. Unfortunately, the government has been blocking those decisions through various legal maneuvering, and that’s partly why she’s still being held, under very harsh conditions, as she herself attested to.

AMY GOODMAN: Laila, the Trump administration mistakenly called her a Columbia student and tried to say she had actively participated in anti-American, pro-terrorist activities and a pro-Hamas demonstration, what they often called the Gaza demonstrations on campuses across the country. Your response?

LAILA EL-HADDAD: Leqaa Kordia has been held and has argued in court that she’s — that her detention is unconstitutional, that it violates the First and the Fifth Amendments, and it’s simply part of a broader trend that we have seen post-Trump to crack down on any dissent and use immigration law, to weaponize immigration law to silence dissent and to criminalize free speech, especially when that speech relates to Palestine, to defending Palestinian life, to criticizing Israel and to challenging U.S. policy, just as we have seen in all of these other cases. She was motivated to act and to protest, exercising her First Amendment rights, which are available to her even as a noncitizen, just like so many other people.

She was spurred to action by her humanity, inasmuch as she was spurred to action by her own personal loss. Leqaa was born in Jerusalem, raised in the occupied West Bank under Israeli military occupation. Her mother is from Gaza. She was separated from her from 20 years because of the Israeli blockade and was keeping in constant touch with her. She came to the United States legally, and her petition for residency was approved to reunite with her mother. She was caring for her mother and her younger brother, who has — with special needs. And very crucially, 200 of her family members, 13 since the so-called ceasefire took place, have been killed by Israel, with the support and the complicity of the United States. And for all these reasons, and for the reasons that millions of us took to the streets, she was protesting, not only at the gates of Columbia, but at many other protests, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, she was arrested last March. It was just days after —

LAILA EL-HADDAD: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — Mahmoud Khalil was arrested, the Columbia student, and right before Mohsen was arrested. They have both been released. Mohsen is back at Columbia University. But she remains in jail. Can you talk about what she looks like now? I understand she’s lost about a third of her bodyweight?

LAILA EL-HADDAD: Yes. She looked very pale. She has lost a significant amount of weight, that is correct. And she has been detained, as you mentioned, in this ICE jail for almost 10 months, despite this judge calling for her release, despite finding that her — that she has — that her prolonged detention is likely unconstitutional.

And despite all this, and she — I will say, she marked also her 33rd birthday, a very solemn 33rd birthday, in which she spoke about how the other women with her in that facility tried to cheer her up, and they formed a kind of sisterhood and bond. And I will say, she advocates on their behalf. Despite all this, in her words, she says, “The conditions here are designed to break the human spirit,” but that, despite all this, she derives hope and inspiration from all of the people that continue to advocate on her behalf, and that it has only increased her resolve to continue to be an advocate and an activist, not only for all of these women, but, more broadly, for Palestinian liberation, when she gets out, inshallah.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have a minute to go, Laila Haddad. If you can talk about what you’re calling for, what Amnesty International is calling for, what senators are calling for, including her own senator from New Jersey, Cory Booker?

LAILA EL-HADDAD: For her immediate release. There’s absolutely no reason for her to continue to be detained. Even though her cousin, that you mentioned earlier, Hamzah, her family had agreed and had actually paid a very high $20,000 bond, that was then returned, the government immediately blocked her release. She’s not a flight risk. She’s not a danger to her society. She has strong community ties. She has no criminal history. And so, we’re calling for her immediate release while her case continues to make its way through the courts. And this is the same thing that Senators Van Hollen and Kim and other congressmen from her district, as well, have been calling for. She should not be in that ICE jail for one day longer. And she faces an imminent risk if she was deported.

AMY GOODMAN: Laila El-Haddad, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Palestinian journalist from Gaza, helping to raise awareness about the ongoing detention of Leqaa Kordia, Palestinian woman from New Jersey arrested at Columbia University protest — charges were dropped — but has been held for nearly 10 months in a Texas ICE jail. Many are calling for her release.

That does it for our show. A happy birthday to Narmeen Maria! An early happy birthday to Raquel Rodriguez Phipps and to Yusra Razouki! I’m Amy Goodman.