Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman detained for a year amid a Trump administration crackdown on protesters last spring, was released on bond Monday from a federal immigration detention facility in Texas, becoming the last of those targeted to walk free.
An immigration judge Friday ordered her release, saying attempts by the Trump administration to invoke a stay to keep her confined were disingenuous. Authorities allowed Kordia to leave the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas.
“We are overwhelmed with relief and gratitude,” Kordia’s cousin Hamzah Abushaban said in a statement.
Kordia’s legal representatives said she will continue to fight her potential deportation in immigration court and in the federal court system.
“The facts of this case have not changed: Leqaa Kordia is in the country illegally after violating the terms of her visa,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
Last spring, the Trump administration conducted an immigration-related crackdown, targeting pro-Palestinian demonstrators who led or participated in protests at Columbia University and other campuses against Israel’s war in Gaza. Administration officials accused the protesters, including Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident who is married to a U.S. citizen, of supporting Hamas, a terrorist group, and threatening U.S. national security.
Authorities have attempted to place many of those who were detained into deportation proceedings, but federal judges have intervened to stop their removal. U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston ruled last fall that foreigners in the country legally are protected by the First Amendment and said the administration unlawfully targeted some of the pro-Palestinian activists based on protected political speech.
Kordia, 33, arrived in the United States in 2016 on a tourist visa, staying with her mother, a U.S. citizen, in Paterson, New Jersey, before transitioning to a student visa. After her application for a green card was approved in 2021, her attorneys said, Kordia followed the mistaken advice from a teacher and allowed her student visa to expire.
Federal immigration authorities initially arrested her in April 2024 during a protest outside Columbia University’s campus, but charges against her were dropped. In March 2025, Kordia arrived at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark for what she believed was a routine immigration check-in. She was detained and sent to the Prairieland facility.
DHS has said Kordia was taken into custody because she overstayed a student visa that was terminated in 2022 for lack of attendance. Her legal team has argued that the Trump administration is illegally targeting her over her political views, including speaking out against Israel’s military campaign that began in October 2023 and killed more than 200 of her relatives in Gaza.
“Speaking out against what rights groups and experts have called a genocide is my moral duty and — I thought — a constitutionally protected right for all in this country,” Kordia wrote in an op-ed published in USA Today in January. “ … Through my continued detention, the Trump administration aims to send a chilling message: People who speak out for Palestinian rights or criticize Israel will face retribution.”
An immigration judge twice ruled that Kordia is eligible for release on $20,000 bail, finding she is not a danger to the public and not a flight risk. DHS pointed to her participation in the 2024 campus protests and a monetary transfer to a family member in the Middle East as signs that she supports terrorist activities.
DHS appealed the judge’s ruling and invoked an indefinite pause on her release as the legal process played out, Kordia’s attorneys said.
“We are elated and relieved that Leqaa can finally return home to her family in New Jersey after a long year in ICE detention,” Sarah Sherman-Stokes, supervising attorney with the Boston University School of Law Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Clinic, said in a statement Monday. “This is an important step in restoring Leqaa’s rights as she continues to be unlawfully targeted by the government.”
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