I spoke out for Palestine. I'm still in ICE custody because of it. |
For more than 10 months, I have been locked in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Alvarado, Texas.
My arrest came after my participation in protests for a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s siege on Gaza at the gates of Columbia University in April 2024. The Department of Homeland Security publicly stated that it had targeted me because of my advocacy for Palestinian rights.
Though I was not a student, I felt compelled to participate. After all, Israel, with the backing of the United States, has laid waste to Gaza, forcibly displacing my family, killing nearly 200 of my relatives.
Since that time, an immigration judge has twice called for my release. But the Trump administration has exploited rarely used procedural loopholes to keep me confined, a practice now being challenged in federal district courts across the country, with many finding the practice unconstitutional.
My detention began on March 13, 2025, when I voluntarily went to ICE headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, for what I believed to be routine immigration questions. I came to the United States on a valid visa in 2016, and mistakenly relinquished my student visa on my path to pursuing permanent residency through my U.S. citizen mother.
Instead, I was thrown into an unmarked van and sent 1,500 miles away from my home in Paterson, New Jersey, where I had been working various jobs in waitressing and retail to help support myself, my mother and my........