She Sent Money To Family In Gaza. ICE Claimed It’s Evidence She Supports Hamas.

To keep her in detention in Texas, the Trump administration pointed to Leqaa Kordia’s remittances to family in Palestine.

By Shawn Musgrave, The Intercept

Since coming to the U.S. from the West Bank in 2016, Leqaa Kordia has sent thousands of dollars to family living in Palestine. Some was money she earned working as a waitress; some was from her mother and neighbors in Paterson, New Jersey, who would “pool it together to send to help out our family,” Kordia explained in a recent court affidavit.

Remittances like these are a typical part of the financial lives of immigrant families. But since Kordia, 32, was arrested in March by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Trump administration has pointed to these wire transfers as evidence that she potentially supports Hamas, in a bid to keep her at an ICE detention center in Texas.

“It was quite upsetting to hear the government claim that any transfer of money to Palestine and/or Palestinians was inherently suspicious,” Kordia’s mother, a naturalized U.S. citizen, wrote in another affidavit.

Kordia’s arrest came days after immigration agents grabbed Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil in New York City. In error-riddled statements and social media blasts, the Department of Homeland Security emphasized Kordia’s participation in a pro-Palestine protest a year earlier, near Columbia.

Unlike Khalil and other high-profile activists targeted for deportation, however, Kordia remains in custody despite findings from two different judges — one in immigration court, one in federal district court — that she should be released. She’s lost significant weight while in the Prairieland Detention Facility, near Dallas–Fort Worth, which has roaches, broken showers, and barely any halal food suitable for a practicing Muslim, Kordia alleged in a habeas petition.