A Palestinian lady who was launched final month after spending a yr in a Texas immigration detention middle informed the Guardian in an unique interview that she sees “a lot of similarities” between the therapy of individuals in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody and that of Palestinians dwelling below Israeli occupation.
Leqaa Kordia, who was detained by ICE following her arrest at a protest in opposition to Israel’s warfare in Gaza, says that she’s going to proceed to talk up concerning the rights of Palestinians, however that she now additionally sees it as her responsibility to denounce the “human tragedy” of immigration detention in the US.
“When I took to the streets, I was defending my rights, and my family’s rights, and calling for freedom for myself and freedom for my family,” Kordia mentioned of her participation in an April 2024 pro-Palestinian protest exterior Columbia University, the place she was arrested together with dozens of others. The expenses in opposition to her had been dropped the next day. More than 200 members of her prolonged household had been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza and Kordia didn’t see herself as an activist, she says, however relatively “just a Palestinian girl, protesting her family being killed”.
“Now, I’ll advocate on behalf of the ladies I left behind,” she mentioned, referring to the ladies with whom she shared an overcrowded dorm on the Prairieland detention middle in Alvarado, Texas. “I was advocating on behalf of my family in Palestine, and now I’m advocating on behalf of my family here in America … Now I have a bigger family.”
Kordia spoke with the Guardian at a Palestinian cafe in Paterson, New Jersey, house to one of many largest Palestinian-American communities in the nation, two weeks after returning house – after an immigration choose for the third time dominated that she posed no risk and ordered her launch on bond. Her launch adopted mounting pressure from legislators and human rights teams, and got here after her 6 February hospitalisation for a seizure she had whereas in detention.
Kordia has been dwelling in the US for almost a decade after leaving the West Bank, the place she grew up together with her father, to reunite together with her mom, who’s a US citizen. She has a pending inexperienced card software through her mom and no prison document.
She was arrested across the identical time as Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi – each Palestinian and Columbia University college students – whose detention a federal choose in Boston dominated was unconstitutional and deliberately designed to sit back speech.
Her time in ICE custody has introduced again many recollections of her childhood in Palestine, Kordia says.
When she was 9 years previous, through the second intifada, she awakened at some point to a gaggle of Israeli troopers in her bed room, pointing weapons at her.
Palestinians in the occupied territory had been dwelling below curfew, and snipers had been stationed on the household’s rooftop for days, whereas tanks lined the streets exterior their house. Like many kids there, she was used to checkpoints, raids and day by day humiliations. Once, she had watched troopers knock her brother unconscious. But the evening troopers barged into her bed room was uniquely terrifying. “As soon as I opened my eyes I saw that soldier laughing – literally laughing – and pointing his rifle in my face,” she mentioned.
She discovered echoes of that second in Texas, the place she mentioned guards would ignore detainees once they requested for assist, informed them to “shut up” – and often laughed at them.
Describing the indignities of life in detention would take “days”, she mentioned, earlier than rattling off a listing of them, from the truth that she spent weeks sleeping on a “paper-thin” mattress on the ground as too many ladies crowded into the middle, to the whole disregard of her spiritual rights, to the medical neglect that led to her hospitalization.
The DHS didn’t reply to a request for remark
The detention middle was at all times chilly, she mentioned, and when she and others complained, guards informed them it was to guard them from “germs”. Women who requested for water throughout hours-long consumption processing had been directed to a water fountain hooked up to a bathroom seat. When the showers in the middle broke down, guards responded to complaints by saying, “It is what it is,” Kordia recalled. Drinking water would generally have “things swimming in it”. The meals – served at 4am, 10am and 4pm – was usually uneatable. Detainees referred to it as “dog food”, however those that refused it risked being put on “suicide watch” in isolation.
“People can literally grow crazy in those places,” she mentioned. She described ladies breaking down and experiencing panic assaults below the eyes of detached guards.
There had been pregnant ladies on the middle in addition to sick and aged ones – guards had been equally dismissive of their requests for assist. “They just didn’t care,” Kordia mentioned. She described the frequent shuffling of detainees from one middle to the opposite – usually inflicting them to overlook their courtroom hearings – as “human trafficking”.
“The word ‘detention center’ sounds nice,” she added. “It’s not nice. It’s a jail.”
For all the present discuss ICE, Kordia believes that most of the people doesn’t have an understanding of what circumstances in immigration detention are like. She herself thought she was an knowledgeable particular person – “It turns out I didn’t know,” she mentioned.
But regardless of their harrowing experiences, ladies in detention constructed deep bonds throughout life experiences and language limitations.
They exchanged family members’ numbers in order that if somebody was transferred or deported they may notify one another’s households. When Kordia was hospitalized, her household solely discovered of it from a fellow detainee; they spent three days attempting to get ICE to inform them the place they’d taken her. Kordia described numerous different gestures of solidarity in detention. When she was sick, different ladies would cook dinner with the centre’s microwave and convey it to her; when somebody had a birthday, they celebrated with gadgets from the commissary. When she collapsed and had a seizure in February, a fellow detainee insisted with guards that they take her hijab together with her to the hospital.
“I was sent far away from my community in New Jersey, all the way to Texas, for them to isolate me,” she mentioned. Instead, she discovered a tight-knit neighborhood. “When somebody cries, everybody cries, when somebody laughs, everybody laughs.”
She additionally took her detention as an “opportunity” to speak to fellow detainees and any guards who would pay attention concerning the plight of Palestinians. Some already knew about it; others discovered of it from her for the primary time. She had a replica of a e-book by the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed early in the warfare in an Israeli strike, that detainees who spoke English handed round and eagerly learn.
“We all came from countries where we know what war is. We know what struggle is, we know what poverty is, so it wasn’t hard for them to relate,” she mentioned.
Kordia mentioned the day by day “humiliation” and “stripping people of their dignity” she had recognized in Palestine was an expertise anybody in immigration detention might perceive. “They don’t call you by name, they call you ‘subject’, or by number,” she mentioned of ICE guards and Israeli troopers alike.
When she left Palestine for the US in 2016, Kordia thought that America was all about “freedom”. “Everybody can say whatever they want and do whatever they want,” she recalled pondering. “I really used to believe that.”
Before her detention, she was working as a server at a Palestinian restaurant in Paterson, with goals of opening a restaurant of her personal. Now she’s unsure what she’ll do; an immigration courtroom has granted her non permanent safety however the administration is constant to hunt her deportation.
But whereas she nonetheless doesn’t see herself as an activist, she now sees “no choice” however to discuss her expertise.
“The least I can do is talk about what those I left behind are facing every day,” she mentioned.
