from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Friday, April 3rd.

With us now, La Caudilla, who was recently freed for more than a year in ICE detention,

originally from East Jerusalem,

then in more recent years from Patterson, New Jersey, Maca had become the longest detained person who had been taken into custody for deportation in connection with the pro-Palestinian

protest at Columbia University. She had no criminal record. Her mother is a U.S. citizen.

Her car was applying for legal permanent resident status on that basis. And she was one of those

people who was taken to a detention center in Prairieville, Texas, so far from her home and family

in the Northeast. She has a lot to say now about conditions at that detention center,

too, in addition to her opinions about why the Trump administration wants to deport her

and about the situation in the Middle East, will get to all of each, or some of each, I should

say. Judges twice ruled that she should at least be freed on bond, but the Trump administration used

technicalities to keep her locked up anyway. An immigration judge ruled there was no evidence to support

the government's claim that she was sending money to Hamas. The court found she was sending money

to family members and found no connection to any terrorist organization.

Mayer Zeranamamani personally asked President Trump for La Caz release when the two men met at the

White House last month. Finally, there came a third court ruling that she should be released on bond

while her deportation case continues.

This time the government did not appeal, and so La Cacquardia is now back in New Jersey,

detained in March of last year, released in March of this.

La Cac Cordia joins us now, along with an attorney who represents her,

Sarah Sherman Stokes, a

clinical associate professor at the Boston University School of Law. If we may go by first

...