A New Jersey woman who was detained by federal immigration agents nearly a year ago suffered a seizure after she fell and hit her head in a Texas detention center, her lawyers and federal officials said on Wednesday.
The woman, Leqaa Kordia, who has been held at the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas, since March 2025 and has not been charged with a crime, was brought to a hospital last Friday and remained there for 72 hours before being taken back to the detention center, said Sarah Sherman-Stokes, Ms. Kordia’s immigration lawyer.
Ms. Kordia, 33, arrived in the United States from the West Bank in 2016, moving in with her mother in Paterson, N.J. She was arrested in April 2024, when scores of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered at Columbia University to protest the war in Gaza. She was issued a summons, the case was dismissed and her arrest report was sealed.
But federal officials began investigating Ms. Kordia about a year later.
On March 13, 2025, Ms. Kordia went to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Newark, N.J., after she learned that federal investigators wanted to speak with her.
She was then detained for overstaying her visa and put on a plane to Texas, where she has been held ever since, even though a judge has twice ruled that she is not a threat to the United States and could be released on a $20,000 bond, according to court records and Ms. Sherman-Stokes.
In appealing the judge’s decisions, government lawyers have twice filed a rarely used provision known as an “automatic stay,” which keeps a person detained during the appeals process, Ms. Sherman-Stokes said.
Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, has accused Ms. Kordia of being a terrorist sympathizer and government lawyers had said they were investigating funds she sent overseas.
Her lawyers have countered in immigration hearings and court documents that she sent $1,000 to help her family in Gaza. Ms. Kordia worked as a server before she was detained.
After Ms. Kordia’s detention, an official from the Homeland Security Investigations agency in New Jersey asked the New York Police Department for information about her, 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.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement on Wednesday that Ms. Kordia had been “found to be providing financial support to individuals living in nations hostile to the U.S.”
Ms. Kordia has not been charged with any crimes.
“The government has absolutely no evidence of why she should be detained except for the fact that she spoke out for Palestinian liberation,” Ms. Sherman-Stokes said.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday called on the Trump administration to release Ms. Kordia, citing her seizure.
“Leqaa Kordia has spent nearly a year in an ICE prison for exercising her First Amendment rights in NYC & speaking out against the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” he said in a social media post, adding, “This is cruel & unnecessary.”
After her seizure, Ms. Kordia was sent to Texas Health Huguley Hospital in Burleson “out of an abundance of caution to ensure her health and safety,” Ms. McLaughlin said.
“ICE will continue to ensure she receives proper medical care,” she added.
Ms. McLaughlin defended the conditions at the Texas detention center, where she said all detainees had “access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.”
“For many illegal aliens this is the best health care they receive in their entire lives,” she said.
But according to Ms. Kordia’s cousin, Hamzah Abushaban, who visited her two weeks before her hospitalization, Ms. Kordia had lost weight and complained repeatedly of headaches and feeling weak and dizzy.
She had been sleeping poorly in a bunk bed in a large hall with dozens of other detainees and complained that her requests for halal food were being denied, Mr. Abushaban said.
“We’re all sick to our stomachs and extremely worried,” he said.
He said he learned Ms. Kordia had been hospitalized early last Friday after another detainee at the center called him, crying. But Mr. Abushaban said that when he and Ms. Kordia’s lawyers repeatedly called and emailed federal officials, they refused to say which hospital she was in. They ultimately learned of her whereabouts from a reporter, Ms. Sherman-Stokes said.
Ms. Kordia has not been able to see her medical records and does not know what caused the seizure, her lawyer said.
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas.
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