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Woman recounts 'ICE dungeons'

Paterson's Kordia describes her year in Texas detention center

By: Hannan Adely
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... Before she spent a year detained by ICE - her name in headlines, her likeness a symbol for unjust detentions - Leqaa Kordia lived a quiet life in Paterson.
..... Her home, often called "Little Palestine," with tis signs in Arabic, Palestinian flags hanging in the streets, reminded Kordia of home in Ramallah in the West Bank. After moving there in 2016, Kordia waitressed, worked retail and cared for her family, including her elderly mother and brother, who has autism.
..... Kordia relished her newfound freedom, traveling to museums and controlled checkpoints, roadblocks and travel permits that made travel difficult or impossible.
..... "I lived 30 minutes away form the Dead Sea, yet I've never seen the Dead Sea in my whole life," Kordia said in a recent interview. "Being able to do those things that I wasn't able to do in Palestine, just to travel from city to city, without having to stop on checkpoints and be terrified by Israeli soldiers, that in itself means a lot to me.
..... "It means, finally, I have some kind of freedom. I've never in my whole life experienced freedom."
..... But the freedom Kordia felt and had long associated with the United States unraveled in dramatic fashion on March 13, 2025. At a meeting at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Newark, agents arrested Kordia and promptly boarded her on a plane to Texas.
..... They told her she overstayed her student visa, but she suspected another reason: her participation at pro-Palestinian protests, including one outside Columbia University in April 2024 that ended with police arresting 109 people, including Kordia.
..... Detained by ICE, she spent the next year at the Prairieland Detention facility in Alvarado. Texas, about 1,500 miles away from home. Twice, orders for her release on bond were automatically stayed by the government. then in March, [2026] when immigration Judge Tara Naselow-Nahas order her release for a third time, Kordia was finally freed on $100,000 bond.
..... During custody, she found solidarity, support and a platform to speak out for the rights of immigrant detainees and Palestinians. Despite demonstrations demanding her resale, had her case being cited by activists such as Mahmoud Khalil and groups like Amnesty International, Kordia says she does not consider herself an activist. She considers herself a human being.

'Defending my family'

..... Immigration officials said Kordia had overstayed her student visa when they detained her. Kordia had a pending green card application she said she mistakenly though offered temporary protection form deportation. In routine cases, the matter would have been cleared up without detention, her lawyer said.
..... "The facts of this case have not changed: on March 13, 2025, [Homeland Security Investigations] arrested Kordia, from the West Bank (Palestine), for immigration violations related to overstaying her expired student visa. She violated the terms of her student visa," a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson wrote in an email.
..... the visa was not the only issue, DHS cited Kordia's involvement in what it called "pro-Hamas protests" at Columbia University and her arrest, although a disorderly conduct charge was promptly dismissed. in court, lawyers also scrutinized money Kordia sent to Palestinian relatives that Kordia said was for basic needs, medical care and housing.
..... Kordia went to protest not as an organizer or activist, she said,but as a person overwhelmed with grief over Israel's escalating military assault in Gaza, She joined crowds in calling for a ceasefire.
..... "When I took to the streets to protest a genocide against my family members which I lost nearly 200 family in Gaza - to the ongoing genocide - I was defending my family and I was calling for the right of my family," Kordia said.
..... Kordia was among the first people detained in the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses that swept up student and scholars who had protested or written critically about Israel. administration officials said their actions were harmful to U.S. foreign policy interests and fueled a hostile campus environment.
..... "When I found out that actually the reason, it was simply just me going to a protest, I was like, 'that's it?' " Kordia said. "Practicing my freedom of speech?" You're doing all of this because I'm practicing my freedom of speech? I was shocked. I was disappointed. I was a little bit terrified too.
..... "We hear about American being the land of freedom, the land of opportunities, where everybody can do whatever they want, where everybody can be whatever they want.
..... "To have a year, a whole year taken away from my life, simply because I practice my freedom of speech, simply because I called for an end of genocide against my people, simply because I called for a free Palestine, simply because I asked for dignity for myself and for my people this was actually shocking and disappointing. All the things I have heard about America before disappeared at that moment."

Trauma and solidarity

..... Asked about her year in detention, Kordia responded that detention was "too mice of a word." She describes where she was held as "ICE dungeons."
..... "It was overcrowded," she said. "I slept on the floor for three months straight. there wasn't any available bunk or bed for me."
..... At Prairieland, Kordia said she was held along with pregnant women, teenagers and women who where elderly. She met women, she said, who had been in the country for decades and had pending immigration cases and were caught up in the Trump administration's immigration detention and removal operations.
..... While in detention, Kordia said she did not received or faced delays in getting items she needed for practice of her Muslim faith, including a pray mat, quran and halal food.
..... During Ramadan, there were a few days when she did not get meals in time before the start of the daily fast, she said. Other women shared food with her. When she fell ill with fever, they made her soup in the microwave with items form the commissary, she said.
..... "I was begging for anyone to come take a look at me form the medical unit," Kordia said. "Nobody came. Nobody cared about me. I wasn't given any medication. Nothing. Nothing at all. If it wasn't for these ladies with me, the people in jail with me, I don't know what could happen to me. They took care of me." In February, [2026] Kordia suffered a seizure in custody and was hospitalized for three days. she said she was chained around her hands and feet and denied contact with her family or lawyers, who frantically tried to find out where she was and her condition.
..... A DHS spokesperson said allegations of inhumane conditions were "false" and that "all detainees are provided with proper meals, water, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers."
..... Kordia also "had access to prayer rooms and religious materials throughout her detention," the spokesperson said. Kordia said the solidarity among detained women and the support she got from Americans and lawmakers, who rallied for her release, helped get her through the year. But she described her release as "bittersweet."
..... "Having friends and what i consider like family still are being held in ICE jails - I'm sorry I get a bit emotional talking about this, but a lot of things have changed in my life," she said. "One of them is having no choice but to speak up and to be their voices."
..... She felt "ashamed" to complain when she thought of the conditions Palestinian prisoners faced, she said. Human rights reported widespread abuse, torture and starvation of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons, including the Israeli-based B'Tselem, the UN, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Physicians for Human Rights.
..... Still, she found similarities in their treatment, including "methods of humiliation, stripping people out of their dignity, calling us numbers, for example, detaining holding people for months without a trial, without seeing a judge or without even charges."

Why she had 'no choice'

..... Friends and family have described Kordia as reserved or quiet but also passionate about human rights, a worldview shaped by her upbringing in the occupied West Bank. Here arrest by ICE has now trust her into the national spotlight.
..... "She didn't ask to be a leader, but now she is thriving in a way," said a friend remain anonymous. "Even before, she was always talking about the Palestinian cause. Now, she finally a platform for it."
..... Rania Mustafa, executive director of the Palestinian American Commit Center in Clifton, echoed that sentiment, saying Kordia has approached the spotlight with a sense of responsibility.
..... She is taking it very seriously and makes suer she is elevating stories of other and working to make sure injustice is addressed," Mustafa said.
..... While in custody, Kordia wrote an oped published at USA Today about her case, detention conditions and Palestinian rights. in the weeks since her release, she spoke about her detention at an Islamic cent in Texas, at a college campus in New Jersey, in numerous media interviews and at a welcome home rally in Paterson.
..... Unaccustomed to the spotlight, Kordia confessed that she gets nervous before interviews. But jitters seem to face as she answers questions with directness and a sense of certainty.
..... Even as she speaks up for the rights of others, Kordia does not call herself an activist. "I'm simple a Palestinian who's speaking up for her own rights and for my family's rights, for my people's rights, and telling the story of what I experienced in ICE jails," she said.
..... "I feel that activists, they have the choice to take this path. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't feel like I have the choice. As a Palestinian, I didn't choose to be born under an occupation, under an apartheid system. I didn't choose for this to happen. and I didn't choose for me to spend a whole year of my life in an ICE jail."
..... "I don't see this as activism, I see this [as] my duty as a human being."
..... Her hope, she said, is that she can remain in New Jersey with her family in the Paterson community she calls home. For now, she is still fighting deportation in immigration court.
..... "I'm dreaming of a future with equal rights, she said. "I'm dreaming of a future where I can exist as a Palestinian, and i can ask and demand my rights without being punished."

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