A Palestinian woman who has been held in an immigration jail for nearly a year after she attended a protest in New York City said she suffered a seizure after fainting and hitting her head last week, an episode she linked to “filthy” and “inhumane” conditions inside the privately run detention facility.
Leqaa Kordia, 33, was hospitalized for three days following the seizure, which she said was the first of her life. She has since returned to the Prairieland Detention Facility in Texas, where she has been held since March.
In a statement released through her lawyers on Thursday, Kordia said she was shackled the entire time she was hospitalized and prevented from calling family or meeting with her lawyers.
“For three days in the emergency room, my hands and legs were weighed down by heavy chains as they drew my blood and gave me medications,” Kordia said. “I felt like an animal. My hands are still full of marks from the heavy metal.”
Her doctors, she said, told her the seizure may have been the result of poor sleep, inadequate nutrition and stress. Her lawyers previously warned that Kordia, a devout Muslim, had lost 49 pounds (22 kilograms) and fainted in the shower, in part because the jail had denied her meals that comply with religious requirements.
