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Free Leqaa Kordia: Palestinian Woman Who Joined Columbia U. Protest Has Been Detained Since March
Calls are growing to release Palestinian protester Leqaa Kordia, who was arrested at a 2024 Columbia University Gaza solidarity protest. The charges were dismissed, but when she went to her ICE check-in this past March, she was arrested and immediately sent to the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, where she has been held ever since. Although Columbia University student protesters like Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil have been freed from ICE detention, "her case sort of fell between the cracks," says Laila El-Haddad, Palestinian writer and journalist from Gaza, who just visited Kordia. El-Haddad also criticizes the Trump administration's effort to "crack down on any dissent and use immigration law, to weaponize immigration law to silence dissent and to criminalize free speech, especially when that speech relates to Palestine."