Last protester in immigration detention after Trump’s campus crackdown has been released

Leqaa Kordia, with hands raised, waves to supporters after being released from the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez) 2026-03-16T21:50:58Z ALVARADO, Texas (AP) — A Palestinian woman who was the last person still in immigration detention after the Trump administration’s 2025 crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists was released Monday on $100,000 bond after a year in custody. Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old from the West Bank who has lived in New Jersey since 2016, had been held in a U.S. immigration detention center in Texas since last March. Kordia was among roughly 100 people arrested outside Columbia University during protests at the school in 2024. “I don’t know what to say. I’m free! I’m free! Finally, after one year,” Kordia, with a beaming smile, told reporters after emerging from the detention center. An immigration judge had ordered her released on bond three times. The government challenged the first two rulings, but Kordia was freed Monday after it did not challenge the third. She was recently hospitalized for three days following a seizure after fainting and hitting her head at the privately run detention facility. “We are overwhelmed with relief and gratitude at the release of our beloved Leqaa Kordia,” said Hamzah Abushaban, Kordia’s cousin, in a statement from her lawyers. “This past year has taken an unimaginable toll on Leqaa and our entire family.” Kordia said she was looking forward to going home and hugging her mother “so hard.” But she also said she would keep fighting on behalf of people still being held at the detention center. “There is a lot of injustice in this place,” she said. “There is a lot of people that shouldn’t be here the first place.” Kordia said she joined the 2024 demonstration after Israel killed scores of her relatives in Gaza, where she maintains deep personal ties . “My way of helping my family and my people was to go to the streets,” she told The Associated Press in

原文链接: AP News