A Palestinian woman from New Jersey being held at an ICE detention center in North Texas is challenging her detainment in federal court.
Attorneys for Leqaa Kordia this week filed a habeas corpus petition demanding her release, calling her confinement “wholly unjustified.”
Kordia, originally from the West Bank, was among the students arrested at Columbia University last year while protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, though her charges were later dismissed, according to the filing.
In March, she was arrested following an interview with immigration officers in New Jersey for allegedly overstaying her visa, and was later flown to the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, where she’s been held since March 14. She’s among numerous student protesters detained by immigration officials in recent months.
Travis Fife, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, one of the legal advocacy groups representing Kordia, said they have asked the court to “evaluate the very explicit and rampant anti-First Amendment comments of the Trump administration.”
"The only reason Ms. Cordia is confined 1,500 miles from home and being denied religious liberty while she's confined is because the president didn't like what she had to say,” Fife said.
KERA reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security and will update this story with any response.
A DHS news release announcing Kordia’s arrest in March said she was detained for allegedly overstaying her F-1 visa. In a statement at the time, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said it was a “privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America.”
“When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country,” Noem said.
In a Wednesday news release titled “100 Days of Fighting Fake News,” DHS said Kordia “participated in anti-American, pro-terrorist activities on campus,” but that “her arrest had nothing to do with her radical activities."
Fife said he’s not sure how fast Kordia’s case will move but hopes “the court will act as swiftly as possible to remedy the injustice that is happening every single day to Ms. Kordia.”
As far as how Kordia, a Muslim, is holding up at the detention center, Fife said she faces daily deprivation of her religious liberty.
“She's sleeping on the floor,” he said. ”The facility is so dirty that she hasn't prayed now in weeks, after going her whole life praying every single day, five times a day.”
He said Kordia remains hopeful she will be released soon.
"When someone is confined illegally, we hope that the court will do right by the constitution and the law and return Miss Kordia to her loving family” in New Jersey, he said.
Priscilla Rice is KERA’s communities reporter. Got a tip? Email her at price@kera.org.
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