Last pro-Palestinian protester linked to 2024 Columbia University protests released from detention

The last Palestinian protester has been released from immigration detention after President Trump’s college campus crackdown.Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old from the West Bank who has lived in New Jersey since 2016, was released on Monday after being arrested last March, according to the Associated Press. She had been held in an immigration detention center in Texas since her arrest.
Kordia’s detention was partly linked to her participation in a 2024 protest outside Columbia University. She was not a student at the university.
“I don’t know what to say. I’m free! I’m free! Finally, after one year,” Kordia told reporters after leaving the detention center.
An immigration judge, Tara Naslow, had ordered Kordia’s release on bond three times. The federal government challenged the first two rulings on her release, but Kordia was freed Monday on $100,000 bond after it did not challenge the third.
Last year, Kordia was one of many people arrested after the Trump administration began using its immigration enforcement powers on non-citizens who had protested Israel’s military actions in Gaza, many of whom were students and scholars at universities.
Among those arrested was Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student involved in campus protests, who spent three months detained in a Louisiana immigration jail before being freed. Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student, was also arrested after she co-authored an op-ed criticizing her school’s response to Israel and the war. She was detained for six weeks.
One Columbia University doctoral student fled the U.S. after her visa was revoked and federal immigration agents showed up at her apartment.
Kordia said she joined a 2024 protest outside Columbia University after Israel killed many of her relatives in Gaza, where she has personal ties. She was one of roughly 100 people arrested by New York City police at that protest, but the charges against her were dismissed and sealed. The New York City Police Department later gave the Trump administration information about her arrest, which the department said it was told was needed as part of a money laundering investigation.
Kordia was arrested during a check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New Jersey on March 13, 2025. She was detained and flown to Prairieland Detention Center in Texas.
Federal authorities have accused Kordia of overstaying her visa, and scrutinized payments she sent to relatives in the Middle East. Kordia said the money she sent was meant to help family members suffering during the Israeli war in Gaza.
The Department of Homeland Security told the AP on Monday, “The facts of this case have not changed: Leqaa Kordia is in the country illegally after violating the terms of her visa.”
“The Trump administration is committed to restoring the rule of law and common sense to our immigration system, and will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted on X on Monday regarding Kordia’s release, saying, “In my meeting with President Trump last month, we discussed ICE’s actions at Columbia University. I asked that the federal government release Leqaa Kordia and drop the cases against four others. I am grateful that Leqaa has been released this evening from ICE custody after more than a year in detention for speaking up for Palestinian rights.”

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