We speak with Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia, who was freed on March 16 after spending more than a year in an ICE jail in Texas. She was arrested in 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s campaign to target student activists and others who advocated for Palestinian rights.

Kordia was born in the occupied West Bank and lives in New Jersey. She was arrested in 2024 during the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia University. The charges against her were dropped the next day, but she was detained in March 2025 by ICE during a routine immigration check-in. “It was supposed to be just a regular meeting with my lawyer [and the] ICE agents. It led to arrest,” says Kordia. “They took me in an unmarked car directly to the airport, and they had informed my lawyer that I’m going to upstate New York, but they took me to Texas instead.”

While in custody, Kordia experienced destitute conditions at the Prairieland Detention Center, including overcrowding, inedible food, inadequate medical care, broken facilities, negligence by guards and more. “The detention center conditions and the ICE agents’ methods brought to my mind a lot of bad memories from the West Bank,” she says.

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We end today’s show with Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia. She was recently freed after spending a year in an ICE jail in Texas, arrested in March of last year as part of the Trump administration’s campaign targeting activists and others who advocated for Palestinian rights. Leqaa Kordia grew up in the occupied West Bank, now lives in New Jersey. She says Israeli forces have killed more than two members of her extended — 200 members of her extended family in Gaza.

In April 2024, Leqaa was arrested during a Gaza solidarity protest at Columbia University. The charges were dropped the following day. But in March of last year, Leqaa was detained after meeting with immigration officials in New Jersey voluntarily. Her arrest came less than a week after federal immigration agents arrested the Columbia student protester organizer Mahmoud Khalil. He was jailed for 104 days. Leqaa Kordia is believed to have been the last person held in detention from the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activists. While in custody, she was hospitalized in February following her first seizure. In mid-March, she was freed after a judge ordered her release on $100,000 bond.

Leqaa Kordia joins us now in our studio.

Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s quite something to see you across the table. We’ve reported on you for so long. Leqaa, how are you feeling? How are you doing right now? A year in an ICE jail, we’d like you to describe your experience and how you were first taken.

LEQAA KORDIA: First of all, thank you very much for having me. It’s such an honor to be sitting with you today.

How am I feeling now? I’m feeling blessed, grateful. But at the same time, the way that I feel, it’s bittersweet, knowing that I left behind many courageous, innocent women and men who deserve nothing but freedom. They’ve done nothing wrong but dreaming. The last year was tough. It was long. It was — I’ve seen and experienced many — a lot of injustice. Something was very disappointing to be there in the first place. I shouldn’t be there in the first place.

AMY GOODMAN: You met with ICE or immigration agents in New Jersey. It was soon after Mahmoud Khalil was taken, so we knew that this was taking place, that people were being picked up. And describe what happened then. That was in New Jersey?

LEQAA KORDIA: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: In a detention center?

LEQAA KORDIA: It was in a detention center in Newark, yes, yes. It was supposed to be like just a meeting, regular meeting with my lawyer, along with my lawyer, with ICE agents. It led to arrest. They took me in an unmarked car directly to the airport, and they have informed my lawyer that I’m going to upstate New York, but they took me to Texas instead.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what did they tell you in those early days about why they were holding you?

LEQAA KORDIA: They were saying just it’s something — it’s an issue with my application. So, I have a petition from my U.S. citizen mother to get that green card, and I have an approved I-130. So, they just told me that “You have an issue with their your application.” So, basically, they were lying to me.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And while you were in custody, you were hospitalized following a seizure. Your legal team said your legs were chained to your bed. And you were denied access to your lawyer or family during that time. Could you talk about that?

LEQAA KORDIA: Yes. So, a few days before I experienced that seizure, actually, I was very sick. I’ve never had a fever like this in my whole life. I was extremely sick, and no one cared about me. Nowhere — the medical care, they didn’t come to see me. I wasn’t provided any medicine or anything. So, a few days later, I fell down, and I experienced my first-ever seizure in my whole life. I was rushed to the hospital.

The entire time, I was chained to a hospital bed. We’re talking about chains, not handcuffs. I was begging them to just let — at least, like, free my hand. Just, like, I feel weak. It’s heavy. I was told that they can’t. And when I asked to speak to the lieutenant, the lieutenant said, “No, we can’t move it.” And I asked why, and she said, “Because I said so.”

The experience was horrible. I felt like I’m an animal, I’m not a human being. I’m not being treated like a human being, being chained to a hospital bed. If I want to use the bathroom or a shower or anything, I’ll be chained. I asked to speak to my mother. I was denied access to my mother. I asked to speak with my lawyers. I was denied access to my lawyers. I told them, “Fine. Can you please inform my lawyers or my family?” They refused. So, basically, I felt like I’m being kidnapped.

AMY GOODMAN: You were detained at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. Can you describe what the conditions were like inside? And tell us some of the stories of the women that you were imprisoned with.

LEQAA KORDIA: So, I always say to speak about the conditions, we need days to speak about few of the conditions. First of all, it’s a jail system, so the word “detention,” it’s actually very nice to describe the place. It’s dungeons, jail. Like, for example, we were in a room that the capacity is supposed to be 37, but we were like 66, sometimes a hundred. I slept on the floor for three months myself. There wasn’t any bed, any available bunks for me. There were — like, we were most of the time overcrowded. We don’t have — we didn’t really have access to the sunlight daily.

The healthcare, it’s horrible. They don’t have doctors. They don’t have nurses. Whoever is working in the healthcare, they’re like under the nurse. One time they gave me a shot, or actually they wanted to take blood from me for, like, you know, blood tests and all of that. And my hand actually swelled for almost like two weeks. And when I told them, like, “Can you please do something?” they said, “It is what it is.”

For example, the showers also got — they stopped working for almost two weeks. And when we kept complaining, like, “The showers are not working. That’s how people get sick,” we were told, “It is what it is,” also. Every time we complain about something, we would be, like, faced by, like, “Shut up,” or, “Stop complaining,’ or, like, “You should be thankful for all of this.” The water have things swimming in it.

We would sleep on a paper-thin mattress. There were pregnant ladies, for example. Some ladies will have their pregnancy like at-risk pregnancy. Nobody will take care of them. Like, they weren’t being seen by a doctor or anybody.

The food there is horrible. We used to call it dogs’ food. And even, like, some of the detainees with me, they actually own dogs, and they would say, “I don’t even feed this food to my dog.”

So, like, if you ask for medical care or anything, most of the time it will be rejected. I had elders with me, 75 years old, 60-something years old, who’ve been in America for like 50 years or more, doing nothing, going to a regular check-in, following the law, doing the right thing.

AMY GOODMAN: These are civil offenses.

LEQAA KORDIA: Yes, yes, absolutely. What I’ve seen there, it’s actually daughters, mothers, doctors, teachers, workers. Like, that’s what I’ve seen there. I’ve seen girls, 16 and 17 years old. I’ve seen a girl, she told me that they went to — they stormed her school, and they literally handcuffed her in front of her classmates. The humiliation.

This actually, like, the detention center’s conditions and the ICE agents’ methods, like, brought to me, to my mind, to my memories, a lot of bad memories from the West Bank and how Israeli soldiers would treat the Palestinian prisoners, or Palestinians in general, the humiliation, the way of, like, abusing, like mentally torturing.

ICE dungeons are systematically — systematically built to break people mentally, to break people down, to make you give up, to make you beg to be deported, even though, like, you’re going to face a lot of injustice in your own country sometimes. But, yes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to ask you — you mentioned your time in the West Bank. You’ve been living in the U.S. for nearly a decade after leaving the occupied West Bank, where you grew up with your father. You came to this country to reunite with your mother, who’s a U.S. citizen. Talk about that, your time, the comparisons you’re raising, your time as a child in the West Bank.

AMY GOODMAN: And we just have 30 seconds.

LEQAA KORDIA: I mean, I grew up under a military occupation. I grew up getting used to if I want to go to school, I would go through a checkpoint, a military checkpoint. I was 9 years old, and I woke up with an Israeli soldier pointing his rifle on my face and laughing, literally laughing. I’ve seen my father being humiliated many times by the Israeli soldier. I experienced bombing, gas bombs. I’ve seen people dying in front of my eyes. Like, a father was shopping with his daughter, and he’s just got killed for nothing.

AMY GOODMAN: I hate to cut you off. We have to end it there.

LEQAA KORDIA: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you so much, Leqaa Kordia.

LEQAA KORDIA: Thank you. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: For you to be here in studio means so much. Palestinian protester released from a Texas ICE jail after a year.

LEQAA KORDIA: Thank you.