By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) – A Palestinian woman was released on bond from a U.S. immigration detention center in Texas after a judge’s order, the last pro-Palestinian activist held under the Trump administration’s crackdown on protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Leqaa Kordia, 33, who was raised in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, left the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, on Monday after more than a year there and was returning to her family in New Jersey, her legal team said.
Immigration authorities say they detained her in 2025 for overstaying her expired student visa though her attorney said she was in the process of securing legal residence.
The U.S. government said local police arrested her at Columbia University in 2024 during pro-Palestinian protests over Israel’s war in Gaza.
“I don’t know what to say. I am free. .. Finally, after one year,” a smiling Kordia told reporters on Monday.
Multiple rights groups and some Democratic members of Congress had called for her release. Amnesty International says Kordia lost 175 family members during Israel’s war in Gaza since late 2023.
Immigration Judge Tara Naselow-Nahas on Friday ordered her release on $100,000 bond. The immigration case against her will continue.
It was Kordia’s third bond hearing after two previous orders for her to be released on bond were automatically stayed by the government. Naselow-Nahas said the government’s arguments against release on bond were “disingenuous.”
Kordia was briefly hospitalized last month following a seizure in detention and said detention conditions were “filthy” and “inhumane.” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani raised her case directly with President Donald Trump.
Claiming that pro-Palestinian demonstrations were antisemitic, Trump cracked down by attempting to deport foreign protesters and threatening to freeze funds for universities where protests were held.
Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the government wrongly characterizes criticism of Israel’s assault on Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian territories as antisemitism, and advocacy for Palestinian rights as support for extremism.
Rights groups have raised free speech, due process and racial profiling concerns.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Himani Sarkar)
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