Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old Palestinian-American, has lost more than 175 family members to the Israeli onslaught in Gaza – now finding herself in ICE custody in the United States where her family worry about her health.

Kordia, whose mother is an American citizen, was taken to Huguley Hospital on the 6th of January under ICE supervision due to a epileptic seizure,  and was subsequently discharged on 10th January, being taken back to Prairieland Detention Facility where she has been held for over a year.

Her family and legal team say that the authorities did not inform at all of her health, only saying when she was admitted and discharged.

“Full transparency: Many people in her family thought she might have died, especially with the secrecy of her condition,” her cousin, Hamzah Abushaban told Al Jazeera.

Kordia grew up in Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank, coming to the US in 2016. She came on a visitor’s visa and stayed with her mother, a US citizen, in Paterson, New Jersey. She later transitioned from a tourist visa to a student visa.

Due to immense loss of her 100s of family members in Gaza, she was motivated to protest alongside Colombia students during the mass protests. In April 2024, she was arrested outside the gates of the university, but the case was quickly dropped.

On March 13th, she was asked to appear at ICE’s headquarters in Newark for what she thought was a routine immigration appointment. But when she arrived, she was “thrown in an unmarked van and sent 1,500 miles [>2,400km] away” as she wrote in the USA Today newspaper in January 2026.

“Inside the ICE facility where I’m being held, conditions are filthy, overcrowded and inhumane. For months, I slept in a plastic shell, known as a ‘boat’, surrounded by cockroaches and only a thin blanket. Privacy does not exist here.”
Kordia in USA Today article, January 2026

Reason for Detainment

Kordia’s legal team claim that she has been detained as a result of her pro-Palestinian activist activities, however, the Department of Homeland Security deny this. A statement released in April 2025 states that, “Her arrest had nothing to do with her radical activities. Kordia was arrested for immigration violations due to having overstayed her F-1 student visa, which had been terminated on January 26, 2022, for lack of attendance.”

The US government has also called Kordia’s money transfers to relatives in the Middle East as evidence of support of ‘terrorists’.

Other people have also stated they were targeted by ICE and federal authorities, such as Mahmoud Khalil, one of the leaders of the student protests at Colombia University – who was detained by ICE in March 2025 and kept at LaSalle Detention Center in Louisiana for 104 days before his release.

Kordia, however, is still in ICE custody in Texas. ICE had 70,805 people detained as of the end of December 2025. That is a 73.5% increase compared to 2024. The increase in ICE activity during the Trump administration has led to widespread outrage and protests, like in Minnesota in January 2026 or in Los Angeles in June 2025.