Learn about the only campus protester who is still being held by Trump, a 32 -year -old Palestinian who grew up in the West Bank with aunts and uncles in Gaza

Now many of these relatives have died, they were killed in the war A lot of tape destroyed. More than 200 days later, Kordia was washed away in the Trump administration A campaign against the protesters supporting the PalestiniansShe regrets her inability to give her family a voice.

“Most of the days I am unable,” said Kordia, 32, a spokesperson for the Texas Immigration detention center where he was imprisoned since March. “I want to do something, but I cannot from here. I can’t do anything.”

Kordia, a Palestinian who lived in New Jersey since 2016, was one of the first to arrest the government’s campaign against the demonstrators, and many of them Prominent activists. I have absolutely gained all others.

Cordia only – the poor by the government, which the public has greatly ignored and caught in a legal maze – suffers from detention. This is, partly, because her story differs from most of the others who mobilized universities.

When she joined demonstrations against Israel outside Colombia, she was not a student or part of a group that might have provided support. Like the arrests of activists such as Mahmoud Khalil Drou is a conviction of elected officials and preachers, the Kordia case remained largely from the eyes of the public.

Kordia was hesitant to draw attention to itself.

In her first interview since her arrest, Kordia recently said that she had been transferred to protest due to the deep personal relationships with Gaza, where more than 170 relatives were killed. The government threw these relations as a suspect, noting that Kordia’s money was transferred to relatives in the Middle East as evidence of possible terrorist relations.

Lawyers of the Ministry of Internal Security did not respond to the comment calls. The agency’s spokesman refused to answer questions about the case.

In a strong decision this week, a federal judge found the Trump administration Illegal targeted demonstrators To speak it. This ruling is not binding, in A very conservative area Where the Kordia case is heard.

“The government has repeatedly tried to mobilize a kind of justification to prepare this young woman in reservation indefinitely,” said immigration lawyer, Sarah Sherman Stox. “It does not seem to be concerned with them, they have no evidence.”

“Go to the streets”

Kordia originated in the city of Ramallah, the West Bank. Her parents divorced when she was a child and married her mother, and eventually became an American citizen. In 2016, Kordia came to the United States with a visitor visa, where she remained with her mother in Patterson, New Jersey, which is home to one of the largest Arab societies in the country.

Soon after, Kordia joined an English program and obtained a student visa. Her mother applied to allow Kordia to stay in the United States as a citizen relative.

The request was approved, but no visas are available. Government lawyers say that Kordia was illegally in the United States since it left the school in 2022, and it succumbs to the student’s status and nullifying its visa. Kordia said that she believed that her mother’s application confirmed her legal status and that she has accidentally followed the teacher’s advice.

Kordia worked as a servant in a Middle East restaurant on the Patterson Palestine Road with helping to take care of her brother, who is suffering from autism.

This routine was raised in October 2023, after he attacked Hamas in southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. Israel responded with a huge military campaign, killing more than 66,000 Palestinians, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, which is part of the Hamas government that it runs.

In calls with relatives in Gaza, “They were telling me,” We are hungry … We are afraid. We are cold. We have no place to go.

Kordia said it has joined more than ten protests in New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC in April 2024, was arrested with 100 other protesters outside the Gates Colombia – which was rejected by public prosecutors and soon closed.

Soon after assuming his post, President Donald Trump released Executive orders Equality of protests with anti -Semitism. Intelligence analysts at the Ministry of National Security began collecting files on non -employees who criticized Israel or protested the war, based on the police and information sites from the police.

“For all resident foreigners who have joined the protests supporting jihadists, we put you in a note,” Trump said in a newspaper that accompanies orders. “Come to 2025, we will find you and your scans.”

Monitoring, detention and confusion

In March, immigration agents appeared in Kordia’s house and the workplace, as well as her cousin in Florida. “The experience was very confusing,” she said. “The matter was: Why do you do all this?”

Kordia rented a lawyer before approving a March 13 meeting with immigration and customs enforcement officials in Newark. She was immediately detained and transferred to the Prairieland detention center, south of Dallas.

Her lawyers said that as soon as he arrived there, she was appointed naked on the ground and denied religious residence, including halal meals.

When her cousin, Hamza Abu Shaaban, visited Kordia about a week after her arrest, she was surprised by the dark circles under her eyes and her condition of confusion.

“One of the first things I asked is why it was there.” “She cried a lot. She looked like death.”

“I have to ask her a thousand times, like, you are sure that you haven’t committed a crime?” He said. “What I thought about and I thought it might be a few other days of detention has turned into nearly 7 months now.”

Kordia said it did not understand the reasons for her detention up to a week or two, when a television in the facility was seized on the news of the arrest of the demonstrators.

“I see my name, literally in big messages, on the CNN network and I was like, what is happening?” She said.

Auditing payments

Administration officials a description Kordia’s arrest as part of the deportation voltage against those who “actively participated in anti -United States of terrorism activities.” A press release in the Ministry of National Security noticed her arrest in the previous year in a “pro -enthusiasm” demonstration, and he was mistakenly describing it as a student in Colombia.

Show court papers New York Police gave records of her arrested arrest to DHS A clear violation of the city’s law prohibits cooperation with the enforcement of immigration. Federal officials told the police that information is necessary in a An investigation of criminal money launderingA police spokesman said later.

In a hearing in the bonds weeks later, government lawyers argued that Kordia continued to be held, noting the summons of the records that showed that they sent “large sums of money to Palestine and Jordan.”

Kordia said that she and her mother sent the money, which reached a total of $ 16,900 over eight years, to relatives. She went $ 1,000 in 2022 to an aunt in Gaza, the salon of her home and hair was destroyed in an Israeli strike. Two other payments last year went to his cousin, struggling to feed his family.

Kordia said: “To hear the government that accuses them of being terrorists and accuses you of sending money to the terrorists, as this is a disgusting matter.”

The immigration judge, who studies the records of transactions and data from relatives, found “overwhelming evidence” that Kordia was saying the truth about payments.

This judge ordered her twice to be released on Bond. The government has challenged the referee, which led to a lengthy – very unusual appeal in immigration cases that do not involve serious crimes.

Adam Cox, a professor of immigration law at New York University, said that the government usually follows, when the government follows, to overcome a visa, rarely arrested, not to mention prolonged detention.

“This type of size and the scope and invitation of the campaign against student demonstrators by the Trump administration is not really something like us in modern memory,” said Cox, who is studying the rise of the presidential authority in the immigration policy.

“One person left behind”

Kordia sought to release the Federal Court, the same path that Khalil and others have taken. Whether it has succeeded in the New York Court of Appeal, which listened to the arguments this week from government lawyers who claim that this relief should be largely prohibited for non -employees.

Khalil, who was released in June, said that he was closely following the Kordia case, and asked the lawyers to transfer messages and remind his supporters that “there is one person who is behind him.”

“It came directly from the West Bank, where it escaped from the daily tribulations of the settlers and the administrative detention only to deal with a copy of that here,” Khalil said, referring to Israel’s practice in prison for an indefinite time without a charge or trial. “It breaks my heart that it is going through all this.”

With the extension of the detention, Kordia said it was difficult to follow developments in the war, not to mention maintaining contact with the relatives who occurred in the conflict.

But long hours were provided to think at a time when the war has finally ended and can find peace.

She said that this would begin to collect it with her mother and other relatives, and perhaps one day a family of her own. She dreams of opening a café and introducing people to Palestinian culture through food. She wants to follow American life.

“This is all I wanted, to live with my family in peace in a land that appreciates freedom,” she says. “This literally all I want.”