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.

To keep her at Prairieland, government attorneys tried to paint Kordia as a potential Hamas supporter and thus a danger if released on bond. In immigration court, they pointed to wire transfers Kordia sent to Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East over the years, without any evidence that these funds were for anything other than fuel, water, or medical expenses for her family members.

“She didn’t always have a lot of money to send, but she sent whatever she could,” wrote one of Kordia’s cousins, who lives in Florida, in another affidavit.

It took weeks for Kordia’s legal team to track down family members who received remittances as far back as 2017. Some were still in Gaza and the West Bank, while others had evacuated to Egypt and Dubai.

“In 2022, during one of the aggressions in Gaza, my building was destroyed and we needed money to rebuild,” wrote Kordia’s aunt, who ran a hair salon out of her home in Gaza before fleeing to Cairo. “My sister was in great need after that incident, so I asked Leqaa for her assistance in sending money,” Kordia’s mother explained.

After Kordia’s attorneys submitted these sworn statements, ICE attorneys switched arguments, and they barely addressed her wire transfers at a hearing in late August, according to Sarah Sherman-Stokes, one of Kordia’s attorneys.

“In the blink of an eye, it became a non-issue,” Sherman-Stokes,........

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