New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has called for the release of Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian Columbia University protester who has been held by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement since March 2025.
Kordia was arrested as the Trump administration sought to round up and deport non-citizens who had participated in anti-Israel protests that drew allegations of antisemitism. Unlike Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate who became a symbol of the crackdown, Kordia was in the country illegally after overstaying her student visa. She had never been a student at Columbia but had been arrested for her involvement in a pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia in 2024.
After Khalil and other students arrested during the crackdown were freed by judges who said the Trump administration was wrong to seize them, Kordia remained in custody.
“For more than 10 months, I have been locked in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Alvarado, Texas,” wrote Kordia in an op-ed published by USA Today last month. “My arrest came after my participation in protests for a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s siege on Gaza at the gates of Columbia University in April 2024. The Department of Homeland Security publicly stated that it had targeted me because of my advocacy for Palestinian rights.”
On Friday, DHS said that Kordia had been hospitalized after suffering a seizure in ICE detention. She was discharged and returned to detention on Monday.
“Leqaa Kordia has spent nearly a year in an ICE prison for exercising her First Amendment rights in NYC & speaking out against the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” wrote Mamdani in a post on X Tuesday. “She was hospitalized after suffering a seizure. Now she’s back in detention. This is cruel & unnecessary. Release Leqaa now.”
Last March, Mamdani, a longtime pro-Palestinian activist, also called for Khalil’s release. Khalil later attended Mamdani’s inauguration.
Another pro-Palestinian activist arrested at the time was Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student who was detained by ICE agents on the street in Somerville, Massachusetts, in March. The main allegations against her centered on an op-ed she had published in the student newspaper criticizing Israel
This week, Öztürk’s lawyers disclosed in federal court that an immigration judge had found there were no grounds to deport her, following a months-long legal battle with the Trump administration.
“Today, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that despite the justice system’s flaws, my case may give hope to those who have also been wronged by the U.S. government,” Öztürk told CNN in a statement Monday. “Though the pain that I and thousands of other women wrongfully imprisoned by ICE have faced cannot be undone, it is heartening to know that some justice can prevail after all.”
Ultimately, no Columbia protester has been deported, though one graduate student who maintained she had not been involved in the protests “self-deported” after learning that federal agents were seeking her arrest. Still, the response to the protests and the subsequent allegations of antisemitism have been far-reaching, with Columbia shedding presidents, agreeing to pay a penalty to the Trump administration and pledging to hire more faculty members with expertise in Israel and the Middle East as a result.
