Last pro-Palestinian activist walks free as US government drops challenge to immigration bond

A Palestinian woman has been released from US immigration detention after a year in custody following the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists, according to her lawyers.

Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old from the occupied West Bank who has lived in New Jersey since 2016, had been held in a US immigration detention centre in Texas since last March.

Kordia was among roughly 100 people arrested outside Columbia University during protests at the school in 2024.

An immigration judge had ordered her released on bond three times.

The government challenged the first two rulings, but Kordia was freed on Monday after it did not challenge the third.

She was recently hospitalised for three days following a seizure after fainting and hitting her head at the privately run detention facility.

Kordia said she joined the 2024 demonstration after Israel killed scores of her relatives in Gaza, where she maintains deep personal ties.

The charges against her for the protest were dismissed and sealed.

She was detained immediately and flown to Prairieland Detention Center, south of Dallas.

She was among a number of people arrested after the Trump administration began using its immigration enforcement powers on noncitizens who had criticised or protested Israel’s military actions in Gaza, many students and scholars at American universities.

Also among them was Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student who was arrested last March and spent three months detained in a Louisiana immigration jail before being freed.

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Source: TRT