A New Jersey woman who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University in 2024 has been released from a federal immigration detention center in Texas, where she had been held for more than a year.
The woman, Leqaa Kordia, 33, was freed on Monday, about a month after she said she had been chained to a hospital bed following a seizure inside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, where she described filthy and inhumane conditions. She has not been charged with a crime.
On Friday, she appeared before an immigration judge, who ordered her released on $100,000 bond. It was the third time that the judge had ordered her release. But government lawyers had appealed the judge’s earlier decisions, forcing her to remain in detention.
On Monday, she was released after the government did not make another appeal.
Her lawyers and family said her health had diminished considerably at the center, where she had lost weight and was experiencing fainting spells.
One of her lawyers, Sarah Sherman-Stokes, told the judge that a doctor had said Ms. Kordia most likely had epilepsy.
On Monday, Ms. Kordia’s cousin Hamzah Abushaban said the past year had “taken an unimaginable toll” on Ms. Kordia and her family.
“We are overwhelmed with relief and gratitude at the release of our beloved Leqaa Kordia,” Mr. Abushaban said in a statement. “No family should have to endure what ours has experienced.”
Ms. Kordia, who is Palestinian, was one of several protesters investigated by federal authorities after being arrested at Columbia University, where demonstrations over the war in Gaza in 2024 ignited a national debate over free speech and antisemitism.
Ranjani Srinivasan, an international student from India who attended the protests, quickly left for Canada after she learned her student visa had been revoked.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and permanent resident of the United States, was arrested in his Manhattan apartment in March last year and held for more than three months in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York had called on the federal government to release Ms. Kordia, calling her detention “cruel” and “unnecessary.” She was detained, he said on social media, solely for “exercising her First Amendment rights in NYC.”
After her release on Monday, the mayor’s wife, Rama Duwaji, posted a picture on Instagram of Ms. Kordia carrying flowers with the caption: “1 year later, Leqaa Kordia is free!!”
Ms. Kordia was arrested at the protests in April 2024. The New York police quickly released her, and her case was dismissed and sealed.
But federal officials began investigating her less than a year later, and detained her on March 13, 2025. The next day, an official from Homeland Security Investigations in New Jersey asked the New York Police Department for information about Ms. Kordia, saying that she was being investigated in connection with money laundering. The Police Department gave U.S. authorities the record of Ms. Kordia’s 2024 arrest.
Kristi Noem, the former secretary of homeland security, had accused Ms. Kordia of being a terrorist sympathizer, and government lawyers had said they were investigating funds she sent overseas.
Ms. Kordia’s lawyers countered at immigration hearings and in court documents that she had sent $1,000 to help her family in Gaza and that the government had no evidence that she had done anything illegal. Ms. Kordia, who was born in the West Bank and overstayed her student visa, worked as a server before she was detained.
An immigration judge agreed and twice ordered her release, setting a $20,000 bond.
But each time, government lawyers filed a rarely used provision known as an “automatic stay,” which keeps a person detained during an appeal.
On Friday, it appeared that government lawyers were prepared to do the same again.
Anastasia Norcross, a lawyer for the Justice Department, said “no amount of bond” would be sufficient to ensure Ms. Kordia’s presence at future proceedings.
The judge, Tara Naselow-Nahas, said the government had presented “very little evidence” that showed Ms. Kordia was a flight risk and set the bond at $100,000, noting that it was a “significant” amount.
In a statement on Monday afternoon, hours before Ms. Kordia was released, the Department of Homeland Security accused her again of participating in “pro-Hamas” protests.
“The facts of this case have not changed: Leqaa Kordia is in the country illegally after violating the terms of her visa,” the statement said. “The Trump administration is committed to restoring the rule of law and common sense to our immigration system.”
Ms. Kordia, who said she has lost nearly 200 family members in the war in Gaza, has denied being a Hamas supporter.
The department did not immediately respond to a follow-up request for comment on why the government did not seek another automatic stay.
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas.
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