A Palestinian protester was let out of an immigration detention center in Texas on Monday, marking the release of the final known individual arrested as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism.

“I don’t know what to say. I’m free! I’m free!” Leqaa Kordia, told reporters outside the Prairieland Detention Center.

“There is a lot of injustice in this place,” she added. “There is a lot of people that shouldn’t be here the first place.”

The 33-year-old was arrested last March during a check-in with immigration officials.

Kordia claims she was taken in because she participated in a 2024 demonstration outside Columbia University against the Israel-Hamas war, which has killed scores of her relatives.

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“In my meeting with President Trump last month, we discussed ICE’s actions at Columbia University,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote in a post on X on Monday. “I asked that the federal government release Leqaa Kordia and drop the cases against four others. I am grateful that Leqaa has been released this evening from ICE custody after more than a year in detention for speaking up for Palestinian rights.”

Kordia was granted bond on March 13, and the Department of Homeland Security declined to challenge the decision, as it had on two prior occasions.

The Independent has contacted the White House and ICE for comment.

“The facts of this case have not changed: Leqaa Kordia is in the country illegally after violating the terms of her visa,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told The Washington Post after Kordia’s release.

Kordia arrived in the U.S. in 2016 on a tourist visa, joining her mother, a U.S. citizen, in Paterson, New Jersey. She then transitioned to a student visa and was approved for a green card in 2021. Following erroneous advice from a teacher, she let her student visa expire, according to her attorneys.

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DHS alleges Kordia overstayed her student visa, which it says was terminated in 2022 for lack of attendance.

Supporters and human rights activists cheered Kordia’s release, arguing she had been wrongly detained for speaking out on her views alongside scores of others with ties to the pro-Palestinian movement, including the high-profile arrest of Columbia protest leader Mahmoud Khalil.

“After spending a harrowing year in ICE custody, Leqaa can return to New Jersey to reunite with her family and loved ones – just in time for the end of Ramadan and start of Eid celebrations,” Justin Mazzola, deputy director of research at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement.

“But to be clear, Leqaa should not have been detained in the first place,” he added. “Today is a powerful reminder that freedom of expression and peaceful protest are human rights – entitled to all.”

Kordia alleges she faced cruel and unhealthy treatment behind bars, echoing widespread complaints from immigration detainees of unsafe conditions under the Trump administration.

“This place makes women sick,” she wrote in an op-ed in Zeteo earlier this month. “Those with serious medical conditions are not given proper treatment. I spent 72 hours chained like an animal in a hospital after experiencing the first seizure of my life.”

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During its first year in office, the Trump administration arrested numerous figures with varying ties to the pro-Palestinian movement, including Tufts University scholar Rumeysa Ozturk, whose apparent participation in the widespread campus activism against the conflict was co-authoring an op-ed criticizing the university’s handling of student concerns about the war.

The administration also attempted to cancel thousands of international student visas as part of the law enforcement campaign, though it backtracked on some of the cancellations.

The arrests and visa cancellations were a prelude to the administration’s larger negotiations with top universities, which it alleged hadn’t done enough to stop spiking campus antisemitism. The White House attempted to cancel billions of dollars in funding to Ivy League schools and top public universities as part of the negotiations.

Some schools, including Columbia, reached settlements with the administration, while others such as Harvard continue to negotiate.

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So far, Mamdani has avoided a contentious relationship with Trump, who couldn’t be further on the political spectrum from the democratic socialist mayor.

The pair of New Yorkers have had surprisingly cordial meetings so far, and Mamdani has sought federal assistance to build a massive housing development in New York City.

Last month, Mamdani appealed to Trump to release Ellie Aghayeva, a Columbia University neuroscience student arrested by immigration officers inside her campus apartment.

Department of Homeland Security officers “misrepresented” themselves to enter the building, according to university officials.

She was released hours after Mamdani’s appeal.