New York (AP) – Grown up on the West Bank, Leqaa Kordia Restrictions on Israeli territorial movement have led to it being separated from the Gaza family. Aunt and uncle in Gaza called from the beach there, where Cordia shared the laughter of her cousin and gave her a glimpse of the waves.
Now many of those relatives are dead and killed in the war Destroyed most of the strips. And after more than 200 days since Cordia was caught up in the Trump administration Pro-Palestinian protesters crack down onshe despairs that she can’t give her family a voice.
“Most days I feel helpless,” said Cordia, 32, from the Texas immigration detention center, which has been incarcerated since March. “I want to do something, but I can’t do it from here. I can’t do anything.”
Cordia, a Palestinian who has been living in New Jersey since 2016, was one of the first arrested in a government campaign against protesters, many of which Famous activists. Everything else won a release.
Only Cordia, mischaracterized by the government, overlooked by the public, and caught up in a legal maze, suffers during detention. That’s because her story is different from most other people who flock to campus.
When she attended a demonstration with Israel outside of Columbia University, she was neither a student nor part of a group that might have provided support. As an activist arrest Mahmoud Khalil The Cordia incident, which depicted criticism from elected officials and supporters, remained largely out of the public eye.
And Cordia was reluctant to draw attention to herself.
In his first interview since his arrest, Cordia said that more than 170 relatives have recently been moved to protest due to deep personal connections with Gaza, where he was killed. The government has cast these relationships as questionable, pointing to Cordia’s remittances to Middle Eastern relatives as evidence of possible terrorist relationships.
A Homeland Security lawyer did not respond to a call for comment. The agency spokesman refused to answer questions about the incident.
In this week’s fierce decision, a federal judge discovered the Trump administration Illegally targeted protesters To speak up. However, the ruling is not binding Very conservative district The incident in Cordia is being asked.
“The government has tried many times to justify this young woman indefinitely,” said her immigration lawyer, Sarah Sherman Stokes. “It doesn’t seem important to them that they don’t have evidence.”
“Go to the street”
Kordia grew up in Ramallah on the west bank of the Jordan River. Her parents divorced when she was a child, her mother remarried, and eventually became a US citizen. In 2016, Cordia came to the United States on a visitor’s visa and stayed with her mother in Paterson, New Jersey.
Soon after that, Cordia enrolled in the English language program and obtained a student visa. Her mother applied to let Cordia stay in the United States as a citizen’s relative.
The application was approved, but there was no visa. Government lawyers say since Cordia graduated from school in 2022, he has been illegally in the US to Cordia, entrusting student status and invalidating his visa. Cordia said she believes her mother’s application guaranteed her own legal status and that she accidentally followed the teacher’s advice.
Cordia worked as a server at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Paterson’s Palestine Way, where she helped care for the Autistic Half Brother.
These routines were covered in October 2023 after Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. Israel responded with a massive military campaign, killing more than 66,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, part of Hamas-run government.
On a call with a relative in Gaza, they said, “We’re hungry. …We’re scary. It’s cold. We can’t go anywhere,” Cordia said. “So, my way of helping my family and my people was to go on the streets.”
Cordia said he joined more than a dozen protests in New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC in April 2024. She was arrested with 100 other protesters outside the gates of Colombia.
It was published by President Donald Trump shortly after taking office. Presidential Order Equating protesting with anti-Semitism. Based on information from Docs’ website and police, DHS Intelligence Analyst began collecting documents from non-citizens who criticized Israel or protested the war.
“We’ve put your attention to you to all the resident aliens who participated in the jihadist protest,” Trump said in a fact sheet accompanied by the order. “Come in 2025, we’ll find you, and we’ll deport you.”
Surveillance, arrest, confusion
In March, immigration agents appeared at Cordia’s home and workplace, and at his uncle’s house in Florida. “The experience was very confused,” she said. “That’s why are you doing all this?”
Cordia hired an attorney before agreeing to a March 13 meeting with Newark immigration and customs enforcement officer. She was immediately taken into custody and flew to the Prairieland Detention Center, south of Dallas.
Once there, she was assigned a naked mattress to the floor and denied religious accommodation, including halal’s meals, her lawyer said.
When her cousin Hamza Abshaban visited Kordia about a week after her arrest, he was surprised by the dark circles under her eyes and her state of confusion.
“One of the first things she asked me was why she was there,” Abshaban said. “She cried a lot. She looked like death.”
“I must have asked her thousands of times. Are you sure you didn’t commit any crime?” he said. “What she thought, and what I thought would probably be a few more days after being taken into custody, almost, what, seven months.”
Cordia said he didn’t understand the reasons for detention until a week or two after the facility’s television was tailored to news of the protester’s arrest.
“I was literally looking at my name on CNN in big letters, what’s going on?” she said.
Scrutinized payments
Management staff Promotion “Cordia’s arrest as part of a deportation effort against those who actively participated in anti-American pro-terrorist activities. A DHS press release said last year that she was mistakenly labeling her as a Colombian student at her “Pro Hama” demonstrations.
Court documents are shown New York police gave DHS a record of her fired arrest – Clear violations of city law, except in cooperation with immigration enforcement. Federal officials told police that information was needed. Criminal Money Laundering Surveya police spokesman later said.
A few weeks later, government lawyers argued for Kordia’s continued detention, pointing to a record of subpoena showing that they “sent large sums of money to Palestine and Jordan.”
Cordia said she and her mother sent a total of $16,900 to relatives over eight years. The $1,000 payment in 2022 was sent to my aunt in Gaza, whose home and hair salon were destroyed by an Israeli strike. Last year I went to a cousin who struggles to support his family with two more payments.
“This is heartbreaking to hear the government accusing you of being a terrorist and sending money to the terrorists,” Cordia said.
The immigration judge reviewed the transaction records and statements from relatives and found “overwhelming evidence” that Cordia was telling the truth about the payments.
The judge ordered her twice to be released on bonds. The government challenged the ruling, sparking a lengthy appeal process. This is very rare in immigration cases that do not involve serious crime.
Adam Cox, a professor of immigration law at New York University, said that when the government chases someone for an overstay on visa, they are usually rarely arrested and held in long-term detention.
“The size, scope and type of publicity of the Trump administration’s campaign against student protesters is not what we’ve seen in recent memory,” Cox said.
“The one left”
Cordia is seeking release in federal court, the same path as Halil and others have done. Whether she was successful or not could depend on the New York Court of Appeals. The New York Court of Appeals heard debate this week from a government lawyer who argued that such relief should be largely off limits for non-citizens.
Released in June, Halil said he had followed Cordia’s case closely, asking his lawyer to relay the message, reminding supporters that “one person is left behind.”
“She came straight from the West Bank and escaped the daily ordeal of settlers and administrative detention just to deal with that version here,” he said of the practice of Israeli Palestinians imprisoning without indefinite charges or trials. “It breaks my heart that she is going through all of this.”
As detention progressed, Cordia said it would be difficult to follow the development of the war, not to mention maintaining contact with conflict-engaged relatives.
But she was given hours to think about when the war would eventually end and when she could find peace.
It would start with reunion with her mother and other relatives, she said, and perhaps she’ll have her own family. She dreams of opening a cafe and introducing people to Palestinian culture through food. She wants to pursue American life.
“What I wanted was to live peacefully with my family on a land that values freedom,” she says. “It’s literally everything I want.”
