In 2024, massive pro-Palestinian protests swept college campuses across the country,

including at Columbia University. As the Trump administration intensified its immigration enforcement

and deportation efforts, several non-citizen student protesters were taken into ICE detention.

One of them was detained for more than a year. Lisa Desjardin has more.

Leca Cordia arrived in the United States in 2016 on a tourist visa from the West Bank to reunite with her mother,

a U.S. citizen living in New Jersey. She enrolled in English school, started working as a waitress,

and applied for her green card in 2017 through a family petition.

But that application did not give her a legal status to stay in the country.

And she says she unknowingly became undocumented.

In 2024, Khadilla participated in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.

She was arrested and not charged. Then she was detained by

immigration and customs enforcement nearly a year later. She was in detention in Alvarado, Texas,

from last spring until this March, as immigration courts decide her fate.

McCabe and her lawyer, Sarah Sherman Stokes, join us both now. Thanks to both of you.

LeCott, you came here 10 years ago.

Your visa ran out in 2022.

But I want to start with your hopes.

You hope to get a green card.

Tell us, first of all, why do you want to become a U.S. citizen?

Well, I ran out from a country that's under occupation.

I grew up under fear all the time.

I grew up separated from my own mother all these years.

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