Growing up in the West Bank, Leqaa Kordia was separated from family in Gaza by Israeli restrictions on movement between the territories. So aunts and uncles in Gaza would call from the beach there, allowing Kordia to share her cousins’ laughter and glimpse the waves.
Now many of those relatives are dead, killed in the war that has destroyed much of the Strip. And more than 200 days after Kordia was swept up in the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, she despairs over being unable to give her family a voice.
“Most days I feel helpless,” said Kordia, 32, speaking from a Texas immigration detention center where she has been jailed since March. “I want to do something, but I can’t from here. I can’t do anything.”
Kordia, a Palestinian who has lived in New Jersey since 2016, was one of the first arrested in the government’s campaign against protesters, many of them prominent activists. All the others have gained release.
Only Kordia — mischaracterized by the government, largely overlooked by the public and caught in a legal maze — languishes in detention. That is, in part, because her story differs from most others who thronged campuses.
