The Trump administration is backpedaling on its effort to label an arrested migrant a supporter of Hamas after several failed attempts to convince a judge they posed a threat to national security, according to a report published Thursday from The Intercept.
Leqaa Kordia immigrated to the United States from the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2016 on a student visa, which she said she mistakenly allowed to expire in 2022 under a false belief that her mother’s visa petition granted her lawful immigration status.
Kordia was arrested in 2024 while at a protest “to mourn dozens of family members in Palestine” that had been killed by the Israeli military, and briefly faced minor charges related to the protest that were swiftly dropped. However, she was placed into immigration detention after the Department of Homeland Security alleged she had supported the Palestinian political and military organization Hamas.
Her attorney, however, quickly challenged DHS’s allegation, providing evidence to a judge that Kordia had only sent money to family members still residing in the West Bank and Gaza. A judge immediately sided with Kordia.
“In the absence of evidence of any connection to terrorist organizations, the Court cannot find that [Kordia] is supporting a terrorist organization by sending money to a family member in Palestine,” wrote Immigration Judge Tara Naselow-Nahas in an April ruling that ordered Kordia’s release.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys appealed the judge’s ruling, and at the same time, quickly dropped their allegations that Kordia was supporting Hamas and moved on to new arguments to keep her detained, arguments that, at least in the short term, have been successful, with Kordia remaining incarcerated at Prairieland Detention Facility in Texas.
“In the blink of an eye, it became a non-issue because it was such a charade from the beginning,” said Sherman-Stokes, Boston University professor in the institution's immigrants’ rights clinic, speaking with The Intercept.
“What we’re seeing is that the Department [of Homeland Security] is throwing whatever they can at the wall and seeing what sticks.”
Kordia had been monitored by ICE since March of 2024, with agents from New Jersey monitoring her WhatsApp account, interviewing her friends and family, and requesting her arrest report from the New York City Police Department stemming from the protest, a report that was supposed to be sealed given the charges had been swiftly dropped, according to The Intercept.
“Adding insult to injury, the government abandoned its ‘dangerousness’ claim based on the remittances and swiftly pivoted to a flimsy ‘flight risk’ argument to prolong Leqaa’s confinement punitively,” said Sadaf Hasan, attorney at the legal nonprofit Muslim Advocates, speaking with The Intercept.
“These tactics reflect the dehumanizing and racist imperatives of the administration to weaponize immigration laws to punish Palestinian identity and the growing movement for Palestinian advocacy.”
