She Sent Money to Family in Gaza. ICE Claimed It’s Evidence She Supports Hamas.

Since coming to the U S from the West Bank in Leqaa Kordia has sent thousands of dollars to family living in Palestine Specific was money she earned working as a waitress several 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 fresh court affidavit Remittances like these are a typical part of the financial lives of immigrant families But since Kordia 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 establishment 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 Prevention 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 circulated She s lost crucial 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 leadership attorneys tried to paint Kordia as a prospective Hamas supporter and thus a danger if published 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 physiological expenses for her family members She didn t constantly 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 crew to track down family members who received remittances as far back as Particular were still in Gaza and the West Bank while others had evacuated to Egypt and Dubai In 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 happening so I urged 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 a professor at Boston University s immigrants rights clinic stated The Intercept Because it was such a charade from the beginning From the start the Trump administration s occurrence against Kordia has been slippery and ever-changing What we re seeing is that the Department of Homeland Assurance is throwing whatever they can at the wall and seeing what sticks Sherman-Stokes commented The sole formal claim against Kordia in immigration court is that she overstayed her apprentice visa which she let expire in on the mistaken belief that her mother s family visa petition gave Kordia lawful status U S Citizenship and Immigration Services approved this petition in May according to court filings which Kordia thought meant she was close to getting a green card But soon after President Donald Trump returned to the White House Homeland Guard Investigations the intelligence division of ICE devoted considerable materials to studying Kordia for purported national safety violations according to court records Starting in early March agents from HSI s Newark office put a trace on Kordia s WhatsApp account interviewed her family and friends in Paterson and even got a four-page document from the New York City Police Department about her arrest at a protest in April along with dozens of other people Since the charges were rapidly dropped Kordia s arrest account was supposed to be sealed and New York laws prohibit NYPD from assisting federal agencies with civil immigration enforcement The city s Department of Review communicated The Intercept that its inquiry about NYPD s sharing of records with HSI is ongoing and a community analysis should be issued by the end of the year HSI also subpoenaed Kordia s records from Western Union and MoneyGram which proved Kordia sent money abroad as in recent months as February Related Judge Finds Rubio and Noem Intentionally Targeted Pro-Palestine Activists to Chill Speech Once in ICE custody it was Kordia s legal burden to prove to an immigration judge that she should be circulated on bond At a hearing in April ICE attorneys pointed to her protest arrest and remittances to argue that she was a danger to the society and potentially a Hamas supporter They first tried to argue that exercising her free speech rights by attending a protest somehow made her a danger to U S assurance Sherman-Stokes explained and when that didn t work they moved on to suggesting that she was sending nefarious money transactions to people in the Middle East From the start the immigration judge didn t buy it In the absence of evidence of any connection to terrorist organizations the Court cannot find that Kordia is supporting a terrorist organization by sending money to a family member in Palestine wrote Immigration Judge Tara Naselow-Nahas in an April ruling that ordered Kordia disclosed on a bond ICE attorneys appealed that order to the Board of Immigration Appeals which like immigration courts sits within the Department of Justice rather than the federal judiciary and Kordia remained at Prairieland While the BIA deliberated a magistrate judge in federal court exposed in late June that Kordia s due process rights were likely violated by her ongoing detention and recommended that she be circulated But a district court judge ordered the magistrate judge to hear additional argument from the regime In early August the BIA remanded the bond order back to the immigration judge for more complete findings of fact about Kordia s money transfers It is a testament to the entrenched nature of anti-Palestinian sentiment that the mere fact of sending remittances to family abroad was enough for DHS and the immigration appeals body to aver that Leqaa was supposedly a threat commented Naz Ahmad co-director of the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability Responsibility project at CUNY law school which also represents Kordia The BIA s remand order set off the quest to track down Kordia s family members for affidavits swearing they had not used any of her money to encouragement Hamas Not only do we have to contact them to prove they are who say they are and that they received money for a diagnostic procedure or because their house was bombed during the Israeli military campaign mentioned Sherman-Stokes They also had to ask each one a horrible question she explained Can you prove to me that you re not a terrorist Kordia s brother a tailor in Ramallah in the West Bank wrote in an affidavit that the money she sent helped him open his shop in where he sells curtains Other transfers helped cover rent gas electricity and hospital bills for Kordia s niece A cousin who now lives in Dubai wrote that a February transfer helped pay for a curative procedure Three other cousins in Gaza and Cairo attested that Kordia s transfers helped cover living expenses and health bills To further insist that Leqaa justify every single penny sent to a family member overseas at a time when particular of the same are living through a genocide only underscored the pernicious nature of the cabinet s empty claims explained Ahmad In her own affidavit Kordia wrote that since she s lost nearly family members almost an entire generation to the ongoing genocide in Gaza In late August the immigration judge again located that Kordia s remittances were not grounds to keep her at Prairieland The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that the money was sent to Kordia s extended family members who were in desperate need of financial assistance wrote Naselow-Nahas Again Naselow-Nahas ordered Kordia s release on a bond and again the Trump administration appealed to the BIA Now ICE attorneys argue she s a flight peril because she consulted with an attorney before surrendering in March Adding insult to injury the leadership abandoned its dangerousness claim based on the remittances and swiftly pivoted to a flimsy flight threat argument to prolong Leqaa s confinement punitively revealed Sadaf Hasan an attorney at Muslim Advocates another legal nonprofit that represents her These tactics reflect the dehumanizing and racist imperatives of the administration to weaponize immigration laws to punish Palestinian identity and the growing movement for Palestinian advocacy They have so little evidence yet they continue to appeal and appeal and appeal Sherman-Stokes stated that based on more than a decade working in deportation defense it s not atypical for the ruling body to make spurious arguments or offer little evidence What s uncommon here is the establishment s unwillingness to admit defeat she reported They have so little evidence yet they continue to appeal and appeal and appeal in the face of an immigration judge finding not once but twice that she should be issued Sherman-Stokes revealed Read Our Complete Coverage The War on Immigrants The leadership s targeting of Palestinian people or Muslim immigrants is also hardly new From the post- Muslim registry to the first Trump administration s Muslim ban Middle Eastern immigrants have faced additional scrutiny for decades But it certainly seems to have escalated declared Sherman-Stokes who called the administration s arguments about Kordia s money transfers vague and spurious maintains that are really grounded in racism and xenophobia Sherman-Stokes revealed it was also remarkable for Kordia to be held in detention indefinitely based just on her overstayed visa without any criminal conviction She exercised her First Amendment rights along with thousands of other people Sherman-Stokes mentioned This is someone we should welcome into the country not demonize This is someone we should welcome into the country not demonize Kordia s habeas petition for release is at present pending in federal court and on Tuesday she filed a brief urging her immediate release despite the governing body s procedural gamesmanship Briefs are due to the BIA next week and Kordia s next hearing in immigration court is scheduled for October After more than six months in Prairieland Kordia is eager to be back with her family in New Jersey Before moving to the U S she and her mother were apart for nearly two decades since Kordia stayed with her father in the West Bank after her parents divorced On top of working multiple jobs and collecting money for family abroad Kordia helped look after her half-brother Omar who has autism and helped her mother who has limited mobility and other physical condition issues with errands and cleaning Against my will I was separated from my mother for nearly twenty years Kordia wrote Being separated from her again is unbearable The post She Sent Money to Family in Gaza ICE Claimed It s Evidence She Supports Hamas appeared first on The Intercept