Leqaa Kordia’s story is one of heartbreak, resilience, and a legal odyssey that has placed her at the center of a national debate. Nearly seven months after the Trump administration launched a sweeping crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists, Kordia remains the sole protester still in detention. Her voice, silenced for months, is finally being heard as she recounts the deeply personal reasons that drove her to protest—and the extraordinary toll her detention has taken.
Growing up in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Kordia was no stranger to separation and loss. Israeli restrictions kept her apart from relatives in Gaza, so she learned to cherish the rare phone calls from her aunts and uncles. “They would call from the beach there, allowing me to share my cousins’ laughter and glimpse the waves,” she recalled in her first interview since her arrest, according to the Associated Press. But now, many of those loved ones are gone, killed in the war that has devastated Gaza since October 2023.
“Most days I feel helpless,” said Kordia, 32, speaking from the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, Texas, where she has been held since March 13, 2025. “I want to do something, but I can’t from here. I can’t do anything.” Her words echo the despair of someone caught between two worlds—one torn apart by conflict, the other by legal limbo.
Kordia’s journey to the United States began in 2016. After her parents divorced and her mother remarried, eventually becoming a U.S. citizen, Kordia arrived in New Jersey on a visitor’s visa. She soon enrolled in an English-language program and obtained a student visa, all while helping care for her half-brother, who has autism, and working as a server at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Paterson, home to one of America’s largest Arab communities. Her mother applied to let her remain in the U.S. as a relative of a citizen—a process approved but stalled due to visa backlogs.
But everything changed in October 2023, after Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. The Israeli military responded with overwhelming force, killing more than 66,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. In the aftermath, Kordia’s phone calls with family in Gaza became increasingly desperate. “They were telling me that ‘We’re hungry. …We are scared. We’re cold. We don’t have anywhere to go,’” she told the AP. “So my way of helping my family and my people was to go to the streets.”
Kordia joined over a dozen protests in New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., including a major demonstration outside Columbia University in April 2024. She was one of about 100 protesters arrested that day, though the charges were quickly dismissed and sealed. Unlike many other protesters, Kordia wasn’t a student or part of an organized group that could offer support. As activists like Mahmoud Khalil drew public attention and condemnation from officials, Kordia’s case remained largely overlooked.
Her situation took a turn for the worse in March 2025, when immigration agents appeared at her home, workplace, and even her uncle’s house in Florida. “The experience was very confusing,” she said. “It was like: Why are you doing all this?” After hiring a lawyer, Kordia agreed to meet with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Newark. She was detained on the spot and flown to Texas, where she was given a bare mattress on the floor and denied religious accommodations, including Halal meals, according to her attorneys.
What makes Kordia’s case especially complex is the government’s portrayal of her personal ties to Gaza. Federal officials have pointed to money transfers totaling $16,900 over eight years to relatives in Palestine and Jordan. This includes a $1,000 payment in 2022 to an aunt whose home and hair salon were destroyed in an Israeli strike. Two more payments last year went to a cousin struggling to feed his family. “To hear the government accusing them of being terrorists and accusing you of sending money to terrorists, this is heartbreaking,” Kordia said.
Yet, an immigration judge, after reviewing transaction records and statements from her relatives, found “overwhelming evidence” that the payments were genuine acts of family support. The judge twice ordered her release on bond, but government attorneys challenged these decisions, triggering a lengthy and unusual appeals process. According to Adam Cox, a professor of immigration law at New York University, “The kind of scale and scope and publicness of the campaign against student protesters by the Trump administration is really nothing like we’ve seen in recent memory.”
President Donald Trump’s executive orders, issued shortly after he returned to office, equated pro-Palestinian protests with antisemitism and threatened deportation for noncitizens who participated. In a fact sheet, Trump warned, “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice. Come 2025 we will find you and we will deport you.” The Department of Homeland Security began assembling dossiers on noncitizens who criticized Israel, using information from doxing sites and police reports.
Administration officials touted Kordia’s arrest as part of their effort to deport those who “actively participated in anti-American, pro-terrorist activities.” A DHS press release even mistakenly labeled her as a Columbia student. Court documents reveal that New York police shared records of her dismissed arrest with DHS, apparently violating a city law that bars cooperation with immigration enforcement. Federal officials told police the information was needed for a criminal money laundering investigation, though no such evidence has surfaced in her case.
Despite two orders for her release, Kordia remains in detention as her case winds its way through a conservative federal district court in Texas. In early October 2025, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully targeted protesters for speaking out. However, this ruling does not apply in the district where Kordia’s case is being heard, leaving her fate uncertain.
Throughout her ordeal, Kordia has struggled with isolation and anxiety. Her cousin, Hamzah Abushaban, described visiting her a week after her arrest: “One of the first things she asked me was why was she there. She cried a lot. She looked like death.” Fellow activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was freed in June, said, “She came straight from the West Bank, escaping the daily ordeals of settlers and administrative detention only to deal with a version of that here. It breaks my heart that she’s going through all of this.”
As the months drag on, Kordia dreams of a future beyond detention. She longs to be reunited with her mother and other relatives, and perhaps one day open a café to introduce Americans to Palestinian culture through food. “That’s all I wanted, to live with my family in peace in a land that appreciates freedom,” she says. “That’s literally all that I want.”
Kordia’s story, marked by both personal tragedy and bureaucratic entanglement, stands as a stark reminder of the human cost behind policy decisions. As her case awaits resolution, her voice—once overlooked—now calls for empathy and justice in a nation grappling with its own ideals of freedom and belonging.