{"id":132400,"date":"2026-02-13T13:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T13:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/132400\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T13:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T13:44:08","slug":"columbia-protester-remains-jailed-nearly-a-year-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/132400\/","title":{"rendered":"Columbia protester remains jailed nearly a year later"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Palestinian woman who has been\u00a0held in an immigration jail for nearly a year<\/a>\u00a0after she attended a protest in New York City said she suffered a seizure after fainting and hitting her head last week, an episode she linked to \u201cfilthy\u201d and \u201cinhumane\u201d conditions inside the privately run detention facility.<\/p>\n

Leqaa Kordia<\/a>, 33, was hospitalized for three days following the seizure, which she said was the first of her life. She has since returned to the Prairieland Detention Facility in Texas, where she has been held since March.<\/p>\n

In a statement released through her lawyers on Thursday, Kordia said she was shackled the entire time she was hospitalized and prevented from calling family or meeting with her lawyers.<\/p>\n

What You Need To Know<\/p>\n

Leqaa Kordia, 33, a New Jersey resident arrested during a 2024 protest outside Columbia University, says she suffered her first-ever seizure while being held a Texas detention facility
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She linked the seizure to poor sleep, inadequate nutrition and stress, alleging \u201cfilthy\u201d and \u201cinhumane\u201d conditions inside the privately run facility
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The charges tied to her Columbia arrest were dismissed and sealed, but she was later taken into custody during a March check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
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An immigration judge has twice ordered Kordia released on bond, but the government appealed both decisions<\/p>\n

\u201cFor three days in the emergency room, my hands and legs were weighed down by heavy chains as they drew my blood and gave me medications,\u201d Kordia said. \u201cI felt like an animal. My hands are still full of marks from the heavy metal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her doctors, she said, told her the seizure may have been the result of poor sleep, inadequate nutrition and stress. Her lawyers previously warned that Kordia, a devout Muslim, had lost 49 pounds (22 kilograms) and fainted in the shower, in part because the jail had denied her meals that comply with religious requirements.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been here for 11 months, and the food is so bad it makes me sick,\u201d the statement continued. \u201cAt Prairieland, your daily life \u2014 whether you can have access to the food or medicine you need or even a good night\u2019s sleep \u2014 is controlled by the private, for-profit business that runs this facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press, but said in a statement to The New York Times that Kordia wasn’t being mistreated and was receiving proper medical care.<\/p>\n

A resident of New Jersey who grew up in the West Bank, Kordia was among around 100 people arrested outside Columbia University during protests at the school in 2024.<\/p>\n

The charges against her were dismissed and sealed. But information about her arrest was later\u00a0given to the Trump administration<\/a>\u00a0by the New York City police department, which said it was told the records were needed as part of a money laundering investigation.<\/p>\n

Last year, Kordia was among the first pro-Palestinian protesters arrested in the Trump administration\u2019s crackdown on noncitizens who had criticized Israel’s military actions in Gaza. She is\u00a0the only one who remains jailed.<\/a><\/p>\n

She has not been accused of a crime and has twice been ordered released on bond by an immigration judge. The government has challenged both rulings, an unusual step in cases that don\u2019t involve serious crimes, which triggers a lengthy appeals process.<\/p>\n

Kordia was taken into custody during a March 13 check-in with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. At the time, federal officials touted her arrest as part of the sweeping\u00a0crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activists<\/a>, pointing to her 2024 arrest outside of Columbia as proof of \u201cpro-Hamas\u201d activities.<\/p>\n

Kordia said she joined the demonstration after Israel killed scores of her relatives in Gaza, where she\u00a0maintains deep personal ties<\/a>. \u201cMy way of helping my family and my people was to go to the streets,\u201d she told The Associated Press in October.<\/p>\n

Federal officials have accused Kordia of overstaying her visa, while casting scrutiny on payments she sent to relatives in the Middle East. Kordia said the money was meant to help family members whose homes were destroyed in the war or were otherwise suffering.<\/p>\n

An immigration judge later found \u201coverwhelming evidence\u201d that Kordia was telling the truth about the payments. Attorneys for Kordia say she was previously in the U.S. on a student visa, but mistakenly surrendered that status after applying to remain in the country as the relative of a U.S. citizen.<\/p>\n

In her statement on Thursday, Kordia said the detention facility was \u201cbuilt to break people and destroy their health and hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best medicine for me and everyone else here is our freedom,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Palestinian woman who has been\u00a0held in an immigration jail for nearly a year\u00a0after she attended a protest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[109,25,118,2301,9,24,12,56,63,65,64,87,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-132400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-app-local-state-politics","9":"tag-app-top-stories","10":"tag-associated-press","11":"tag-immigration","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-nyc-headlines","18":"tag-nyc-news","19":"tag-politics","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}