cross-posted from: hexbear.net/post/6315507

cross-posted from: ibbit.at/post/70371

Since coming to the U.S. from the West Bank in 2016, Leqaa Kordia has sent thousands of dollars to family living in Palestine. Some was money she earned working as a waitress; some 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 recent court affidavit.

Remittances like these are a typical part of the financial lives of immigrant families. But since Kordia, 32, 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 government 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 Security 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 released. She’s lost significant 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, government attorneys tried to paint Kordia as a potential Hamas supporter and thus a danger if released 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 medical expenses for her family members.

“She didn’t always 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 team to track down family members who received remittances as far back as 2017. Some were still in Gaza and the West Bank, while others had evacuated to Egypt and Dubai.

“In 2022, 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 incident, so I asked 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, told The Intercept. “Because it was such a charade from the beginning.”

From the start, the Trump administration’s case against Kordia has been slippery and ever-changing.

“What we’re seeing is that the Department [of Homeland Security] is throwing whatever they can at the wall and seeing what sticks,” Sherman-Stokes said.

The sole formal claim against Kordia in immigration court is that she overstayed her student visa, which she let expire in 2022 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 2021, 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 Security Investigations, the intelligence division of ICE, devoted considerable resources to investigating Kordia for purported “national security 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 report from the New York City Police Department about her arrest at a protest in April 2024, along with dozens of other people.

Since the charges were quickly dropped, Kordia’s arrest report was supposed to be sealed, and New York laws prohibit NYPD from assisting federal agencies with civil immigration enforcement. The city’s Department of Investigation told The Intercept that its inquiry about NYPD’s sharing of records with HSI is ongoing, and a public report should be issued by the end of the year.

HSI also subpoenaed Kordia’s records from Western Union and MoneyGram, which showed Kordia sent money abroad as recently as February 2025.

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Once in ICE custody, it was Kordia’s legal burden to prove to an immigration judge that she should be released 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 community 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. security,” 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 released on a $20,000 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 found in late June that Kordia’s due process rights were likely violated by her ongoing detention and recommended that she be released. But a district court judge ordered the magistrate judge to hear additional argument from the government.

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,” said 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 support Hamas.

“Not only do we have to contact them to prove they are who say they are, and that they received money for a medical procedure or because their house was bombed during the Israeli military campaign,” said Sherman-Stokes. They also had to ask each one a “horrible question,” she said: “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 2021, 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 2025 transfer helped pay for a medical procedure. Three other cousins in Gaza and Cairo attested that Kordia’s transfers helped cover living expenses and medical bills.

“To further insist that Leqaa justify every single penny sent to a family member overseas, at a time when some of the same are living through a genocide, only underscored the pernicious nature of the government’s empty allegations,” said Ahmad.

In her own affidavit, Kordia wrote that, since 2023, she’s lost “nearly 175 family members — almost an entire generation — to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

In late August, the immigration judge again found 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 $20,000 bond, and again, the Trump administration appealed to the BIA. Now, ICE attorneys argue she’s a flight risk because she consulted with an attorney before surrendering in March.

“Adding insult to injury, the government abandoned its ‘dangerousness’ claim based on the remittances and swiftly pivoted to a flimsy ‘flight risk’ argument to prolong Leqaa’s confinement punitively,” said 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 said that, based on more than a decade working in deportation defense, it’s not unusual for the government to make spurious arguments or offer little evidence.

“What’s uncommon here is the government’s unwillingness to admit defeat,” she said. “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 released,” Sherman-Stokes said.
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The government’s targeting of Palestinian people or Muslim immigrants is also hardly new. From the post-9/11 “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,” said Sherman-Stokes, who called the government’s arguments about Kordia’s money transfers “vague and spurious claims that are really grounded in racism and xenophobia.”

Sherman-Stokes said it was also unusual 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 said. “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 currently pending in federal court, and on Tuesday she filed a brief urging her immediate release despite the government’s “procedural gamesmanship.” Briefs are due to the BIA next week, and Kordia’s next hearing in immigration court is scheduled for October 23.

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 health 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.

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From The Intercept via this RSS feed

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-03/merz-urges-germans-to-accept-change-or-suffer-economic-decline

lunica.email/sopraelevata-futu…

The Alaska Republican confirmed his participation in talks that have been ongoing behind the scenes for weeks.

“There’s a number of people involved,” said Sullivan in an interview. So far, the only other Republicans to make their participation in the discussions public have been Sens. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Another admission that they fucked up.

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/10/01/congress/republican-senator-outlines-working-groups-ideas-for-extending-obamacare-subsidies-00590734

cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/37029295

Abdel Qader Sabbah
Oct 02, 2025

“We are displaced. We were in the north and they told us to get out and go to the humanitarian zone. They said go south of Wadi Gaza. We went south of the Wadi. We didn’t leave in the first displacement. This time we couldn’t stay so we came here,” Ismail Abu Sharakh, an eyewitness to the Wednesday strike, told Drop Site as he pointed to destroyed tents at the site of the attack.

He held up a wad of shredded banknotes residents had pooled together to buy a makeshift water line, nothing more than a thin pipe with protruding hoses leading to various tents. Remnants of the Israeli munition lay next to a small crater where it made impact. The surrounding tents were ripped and torn through with shrapnel. Bloodstained mattresses and bits of flesh lay on the ground.

Peter Link

2025-10-03 15:05:16

“Death is Better Than This Life”: Displaced Palestinians in Gaza Are Being Bombed in Their Tents

Abdel Qader Sabbah
Oct 02, 2025

“We are displaced. We were in the north and they told us to get out and go to the humanitarian zone. They said go south of Wadi Gaza. We went south of the Wadi. We didn’t leave in the first displacement. This time we couldn’t stay so we came here,” Ismail Abu Sharakh, an eyewitness to the Wednesday strike, told Drop Site as he pointed to destroyed tents at the site of the attack.

He held up a wad of shredded banknotes residents had pooled together to buy a makeshift water line, nothing more than a thin pipe with protruding hoses leading to various tents. Remnants of the Israeli munition lay next to a small crater where it made impact. The surrounding tents were ripped and torn through with shrapnel. Bloodstained mattresses and bits of flesh lay on the ground.

“Death is Better Than This Life”: Displaced Palestinians in Gaza Are Being Bombed in Their Tents

Israel attacked tent encampments and Al-Aqsa hospital as Palestinians fled Israel’s intensifying ethnic cleansing campaign in the north.

^{Abdel Qader Sabbah (Drop Site News)}

cross-posted from: lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/3258513…

transcription: i want to be held and fall asleep next to somebody > ??? > im a catgirl :3c

The increasing age of Black members of Congress was on the minds of attendees at the conference, a multiday event that started on Sept. 24. Many said that they felt that fresh blood is needed, but it’s unclear how that would happen without veteran lawmakers stepping aside.

Younger voters are thought to be the keys to future electoral success, and some members of the Democratic Party have argued that attracting them will require electing younger members. They feel that seasoned lawmakers are out of touch, and don’t have what it takes to lead some of the most pressing civil rights battles of today.

This tension came to a head this month. Robert White, a third-term member of the D.C. Council, announced that he would challenge his former boss, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district’s longtime nonvoting representative, for her seat in the Democratic primary next year. Norton’s campaign team didn’t respond to Capital B’s request for comment.

Norton has served since 1991, and at 88 years old, she’s the oldest member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Lauren Ishmael, 67, said that veteran lawmakers are “very smart, very well-informed, and very well-connected.” But she also believes that they need to make room for the perspectives and contributions of younger generations.

“We need some younger voices, younger faces, younger experiences,” Ishmael, a first-time attendee, told Capital B, clad in a crimson and cream Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. jacket. “We need young blood.”

Jumping in, Ishmael’s friend and sorority sister Sandra Caldwell, 77, elaborated a bit further and said that younger people “just think differently.”

Calls for ‘New Blood’ Grow at Congressional Black Caucus Gathering

Veteran Black lawmakers, some say, are increasingly out of touch and don’t have what it takes to lead the most important civil rights battles of today.

^{Brandon Tensley (Capital B News)}

I am currently searching for decent mattress and open up Which? post about best Mattress. Only problem is that the information is locked under it's subscription wall.

Stuff I have tried but didn't work:
- Remove Paywall's website
- Archive.today

Best mattresses 2025: tried and tested for a perfect night's sleep

The best mattresses to buy in the UK, according to Which? independent lab tests. We explain the different mattress types and features, plus how to choose the right firmness for you.

^{Lisa Galliers (Which?)}

I am currently searching for decent mattress and open up Which? post about best Mattress. Only problem is that the information is locked under it's subscription wall.

Stuff I have tried but didn't work:
- Remove Paywall's website
- Archive.today

Best mattresses 2025: tried and tested for a perfect night's sleep

The best mattresses to buy in the UK, according to Which? independent lab tests. We explain the different mattress types and features, plus how to choose the right firmness for you.

^{Lisa Galliers (Which?)}

• An Indonesian songbird once nearly extinct in the wild, the Bali starling, is making a comeback through community-led conservation on Nusa Penida and beyond.
• Strict law enforcement and captive breeding failed to reverse the bird’s decline; poaching and habitat loss continued despite decades of formal protections.
• In the early 2000s, conservationists changed tactics, working with communities on Nusa Penida to establish the island as a sanctuary for Bali starlings.
• Villages embraced traditional awig-awig regulations to protect the starling, creating powerful cultural, social and financial deterrents to poaching.

Indigenous-led protections spark Bali starling’s recovery in the wild

NUSA PENIDA, Indonesia — Two young conservation workers rattle up on a motorbike and dismount at the edge of a coconut grove. Picking through husks, fallen fronds and stray plastic bottles, they scan the canopy, waiting in stillness.

^{Isabel Esterman (Conservation news)}