ALVARADO, Texas — A Palestinian woman held in U.S. immigration detention in Texas for about a year was released Monday after an immigration judge granted her bond, according to the Associated Press report.
Leqaa Kordia, 33, who has lived in New Jersey since 2016, had been held at a U.S. immigration detention center in Texas since last March. The report said Kordia’s detention was linked, in part, to her participation in a protest outside Columbia University in 2024.
After she emerged from the detention center, Kordia told reporters, “I don’t know what to say. I’m free! I’m free! Finally, after one year,” according to the AP account. She said she was looking forward to going home and hugging her mother “so hard,” and she added that she would keep fighting for people still being held at the facility.
Kordia’s release followed immigration court bond decisions, the report said. An immigration judge had ordered her released on bond three times, and the government challenged the first two rulings. She was freed Monday on $100,000 bond after the government did not challenge the third decision, the report said.
The AP report described Kordia’s statements about her detention. She said, “There is a lot of injustice in this place,” and she said, “There is a lot of people that shouldn’t be here the first place.”
The case was part of a broader effort by the Trump administration that the AP report said used immigration enforcement powers against noncitizens who criticized or protested Israel’s military actions in Gaza. The report said other people arrested last year included Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student who spent three months detained in a Louisiana immigration jail before being freed, and Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student who co-authored an op-ed criticizing her university’s response to Israel and the war, who was detained for six weeks.
Kordia’s arrest, according to the AP report, took place during a March 13, 2025, check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New Jersey. The report said she was detained immediately and flown to Prairieland Detention Center south of Dallas.
Federal officials have accused Kordia of overstaying her visa and scrutinized payments she sent to relatives in the Middle East, the AP reported. Kordia said the money was meant to help family members suffering during the war, and the immigration judge found “overwhelming evidence” that she was telling the truth about the payments, according to the report.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson previously criticized Kordia, the AP report said, for what Tricia McLaughlin called “providing financial support to individuals living in nations hostile to the U.S.” In a Monday night email, the department said, “The facts of this case have not changed: Leqaa Kordia is in the country illegally after violating the terms of her visa,” and the department said the Trump administration would continue to fight for the “arrest, detention, and removal” of aliens who have no right to be in the country, the AP report said.
The AP report said Kordia had been hospitalized for three days after a seizure following fainting and hitting her head at the privately run detention facility. At a hearing Friday, her attorneys said she had a neurological condition that had worsened while in custody, putting her at an elevated risk of seizure, and they said she could stay with U.S. citizen family members and did not pose a flight risk. The immigration judge, Tara Naslow, agreed, the report said, and Naslow said, “I’ve heard testimony. I’ve seen thousands of pages of evidence presented by the respondent, and very little evidence presented by the government in any of this.”
In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on X that he asked for Kordia’s release after he met with President Donald Trump last month, according to the AP report. Mamdani said he was grateful that Kordia was released from ICE custody after more than a year in detention for speaking up for Palestinian rights, the report said.
Kordia said she joined a 2024 demonstration outside Columbia after Israel killed scores of her relatives in Gaza. The AP report said she was around 100 people arrested by city police at that protest, but the charges against her were dismissed and sealed, and the report said the New York City Police Department later provided information about her arrest to the Trump administration, saying it was told records were needed as part of a money laundering investigation.