Leqaa Kordia, pictured during a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing last month, has not been charged with a crime.
Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times

ICE Releases Columbia Protester Who Was Held For 1 Year

Leqaa Kordia, 33, had been held in a Texas facility, where she said her health had declined. She was arrested during a 2024 protest and then detained by ICE in March 2025.

by · NY Times

A New Jersey woman who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University in 2024 has been released from a federal detention center in Texas, where she had been held for more than a year.

The woman, Leqaa Kordia, 33, was freed on Monday, about a month after she said she had been chained to a hospital bed following a seizure inside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, where she described filthy and inhumane conditions. She has not been charged with a crime.

On Friday, she appeared before an immigration judge, who ordered her released on $100,000 bond. It was the third time that the judge had ordered her release. But government lawyers had appealed the judge’s earlier decisions, forcing her to remain in detention.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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