Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman who was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for more than a year after participating in protests near Columbia University, sat down with MS NOW for her first television interview since being released from custody.
She joined “The Weekend: Primetime” on Sunday to discuss her time inside a Texas detention center and the toll it took on her physical and mental health.
Earlier this month, an immigration judge ordered that Kordia be released on a $100,000 bond. The 33-year-old had been held at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, since last March, after federal authorities arrested her for overstaying her student visa. She has not been charged with a crime.
“It was an awful experience,” she said of her time at the Texas facility. “It was a long, tough year. The conditions in ICE detentions are horrible, horrific. I always say that we need days to talk about [a] few of the conditions.”
According to Kordia, detainees live in inhumane conditions and lack adequate access to nutritious food and proper health care, which she said she witnessed firsthand after suffering from a seizure while in custody. “Medical care is horrible,” she said. “They don’t have doctors. They don’t have even nurses.”
She said she had a fever a few days before experiencing a seizure. “I looked miserable,” she said. “I felt miserable, and I was begging them for help. … Nobody showed up.”
While Kordia said she does not remember what happened in the moments before her seizure, she recalled waking up in the medical unit “terrified.”
For the next three days, she was “chained” to a hospital bed, she said. “If I wanted to use the bathroom, I would be chained. If I wanted to take a shower, I’d be chained,” she told MS NOW.
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Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
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