NYPD Shares Palestinian Protester’s Information with ICE, Now Key Evidence in Deportation Case

The police in New York City gave federal immigration officials an internal record about a Palestinian woman they arrested at a protest. The Trump administration is now using this record as proof to try to deport her, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The NYPD released the report in March. It includes an outline of the details found in their records about Leqaa Kordia, a resident of New Jersey who was stopped at a protest outside of Columbia University last spring. It has her home location, date of birth, and a two-sentence account of the arrest from a police officer.

Its release to federal authorities shows that the NYPD and the Trump administration are working together behind the scenes. It also makes people wonder if the city is following sanctuary laws, which say that cops can’t help with immigration enforcement.

Kordia, who is 32 years old, was one of the first noncitizens arrested during President Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests.

Immigration officials held her while she voluntarily checked in with them in Newark, New Jersey, on March 13. She was then taken to an immigration jail in Texas. That same day, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said she was being arrested because her visa had passed and she had been involved in “pro-Hamas protests.”

It’s still not clear how immigration officials found out that Kordia was at the protest near Columbia in April of last year. Police charged Kordia with disorderly behaviour at the protest. But after a few weeks, the charge was dropped and the case was closed.

What the NYPD told ICE

City law says that police can’t give federal immigration officials information about arrests, but there are some cases where this is okay, like when the arrest is related to a crime investigation.

A New York City police officer wrote a four-page report about Kordia on March 14 and gave it to Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A spokesperson for the NYPD said in an email that the department “received a request from a federal agency related to a criminal investigation and shared relevant information in line with our sanctuary city policies.”

The statement also said, “The NYPD does not take part in programs that are meant to revoke visas or handle any other civil immigration matter.”

The department wouldn’t say what the review was about.

We asked the DHS and ICE questions, but they did not answer.

Lawyers and people who fight for civil liberties said the paper showed a concerning amount of sharing of information between the city and the federal government, which has mixed up criticism of Israel with support for Hamas, a terrorist group recognised by the United States.

The goal of sanctuary laws is to stop people from working together and sharing information without a good reason, said Meghna Philip, head of special litigation at the Legal Aid Society.

“It seems to be a clear violation of the law,” Philip said. “It also makes me wonder what, if any, limits the NYPD has on sharing information with a federal government that wants to make speech illegal.”

A protester with little fame

And Kordia grew up in Jerusalem and the West Bank. In 2016, she went to New Jersey with her American mother. Her lawyers say she learnt English at a local exchange program but let her student visa expire because she thought her application for permanent residency was enough to legally stay in the country.

Trump’s crackdown caught a lot of people, but Kordia’s case stood out. She was not a vocal activist, and she had not said anything bad about Israel in public, like on social media or in an opinion piece for a newspaper. She wasn’t active on any social media sites, and she wasn’t on any of the public lists that pro-Israel groups keep to find people who show up to pro-Palestinian protests. The news stories about the protests did not mention her name.

That the Trump administration called her a Columbia student, she has never been a student there and wasn’t even registered in college when she joined a protest outside of Columbia in 2024. Her lawyers said she was peacefully speaking out against Israel’s military operation in Gaza, which they said had killed more than 100 of her family members.

The NYPD would not say when they were first contacted by federal officials or if the March 14 report was the first time they shared information about Kordia’s arrest history.

Watching and questioning people

Lawyers for Kordia say that federal agents started questioning her family members and neighbours in early March. In a court document, her lawyers said that they also asked for records from her MoneyGram account and “established a trace on her WhatsApp messaging account.”

A report says that the review only found that Ms. Kordia sent one payment to a Palestinian family member in 2022, which is protected by the First Amendment.

At a meeting on April 3, the federal government said that Kordia shouldn’t be freed because she had been arrested before for protesting. There was no proof that Kordia had been violent at the protest, so the immigration judge let her go free on a $20,000 bond, which she paid.

The government has filed an appeal, so she is still being held for now.

In a plea for her release, Kordia’s lawyers said that since she got to jail, she hasn’t been able to eat halal food. According to facility records given to her lawyers, she has lost 49 pounds (22 kilogrammes) and passed out in the shower because of it.

Her lawyer, Arthur Ago, said, “The government’s whole case that Ms. Kordia is a threat to the United States is based on a single summons for her to attend a protest.” “The only thing that put her in jail right now is her political views.”

Mayors working together

Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, has said that his administration is “meticulously” following the law, but he has also criticised the city’s sanctuary policies.

The AP asked the mayor last month if the NYPD could share information with federal law enforcement about a protester’s ticket. The mayor said that no such request had ever been made.

Adams said, “There’s no proof that this took place.” “When I asked, they said we didn’t hand over anything and that we don’t work together on civil enforcement matters.” That was said over and over.

Friday, his office did not answer questions.

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