AILSA CHANG, HOST:
In the spring of 2024, a young Palestinian woman, Leqaa Kordia, was arrested while protesting outside Columbia University. She was not a student but joined protests after more than a hundred of her family members were killed in Gaza. Kordia was let go, but the arrest put her on the government's radar. And almost a year later, they took her into custody and put her on a plane to a detention facility outside of Dallas this past March.
Kordia had entered the U.S. legally in 2016. She was applying for a green card through her mother, who's a U.S. citizen, but in the process, her status had lapsed, which led to her detention. She has now been held for more than seven months. A judge has twice ordered her release. Both times, the government appealed, accusing her of supporting Hamas, which Kordia has refuted in court.
Leqaa Kordia is believed to be the last Columbia protester still in detention. Radio Diaries got in touch with her cousin, Hamzah Abushaban, who talks to her almost every day. He recently recorded one of their phone calls.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HAMZAH ABUSHABAN: Hey, Lulu.
LEQAA KORDIA: Hey.
ABUSHABAN: What's going on? How are you?
KORDIA: Surviving, except (ph) it's...
ABUSHABAN: Surviving, but you're not thriving.
KORDIA: (Laughter) No. I'm just surviving for now.
ABUSHABAN: The first week that she was in detention, I was in Dallas for work, and I extended my trip to pay her a visit. It's just like you see in the movies. You can only talk to them through that phone, and there's a really thick glass in-between. That's when it kind of hit me, like, whoa. This is, like, a lot more serious than what I thought it was going to be. When she picked up the phone, the very first thing she said was, Hamzah, why am I here?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ABUSHABAN: So Lulu, do you remember, like, who was the first person that told you people were looking for you? Like, how did all of that happen?
KORDIA: So I received a call from my mother telling me there are people asking for you from the government. At the beginning, I thought, like, they're missing a form or something. OK, I'm just going to solve this issue and then, like, I'll have my green card soon. But they took my fingerprints and all that. They said, you're going to Texas. I said, Texas? Like, that's really far away. And when I arrived to Texas, the place was overcrowded.
ABUSHABAN: How many people are there with you?
KORDIA: So right now, we're 87, and the capacity of this place is 37. It's a lot of people sleeping on the floor.
ABUSHABAN: Wow.
KORDIA: Yeah. Maybe another word to describe this place - a big bathroom. It's open. Everything is open. There is no privacy.
ABUSHABAN: When all this first started, you know, she kind of chose me to be the family lawyer. So now, you know, I do talk to her almost every single day. It's frustrating because no one would have ever thought that she would be in there seven months and counting.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KORDIA: The charges were only about immigration. So if it's only about immigration, I'm fine. I'm going to be out very soon. The judge ruled that I should be released, and ICE appealed the same day, saying that I'm dangerous, I went for a protest and all that. The second time, the judge ruled immediate release again, and again, ICE appealed the same day. Just, like, a slap on the face 'cause I came to America looking for freedom and freedom of speech - freedom of everything. You know what I mean? To be held here in this place for saying - free Palestine, ceasefire now - that was, like, kind of a shock to me 'cause that's not the America that I heard of.
ABUSHABAN: Yeah. I mean, I can only imagine.
KORDIA: It's a horrible feeling to be here, trapped in this place. It feels like it's wasted time here.
ABUSHABAN: Yeah.
KORDIA: Like - yeah. Oh, there is only less than one minute.
ABUSHABAN: Sorry. I know the time limit always keeps kicking us out, so I'll call you later, inshallah.
KORDIA: All right. I'll talk to you.
ABUSHABAN: I'll talk to you. Bye-bye.
KORDIA: Take care.
CHANG: That was Leqaa Kordia and her cousin, Hamzah Abushaban. This story was produced by Nellie Gilles and edited by Deborah George. You can find more stories on the Radio Diaries podcast. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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