**Leqaa Kordia** for **Zeteo** \- March 8, 2026. Here are the opening paragraphs: 

>On this International Women’s Day, nearly a year after I was first detained by ICE for speaking out for Palestinian freedom, my thoughts are filled with the women who, like me, are living – surviving – in immigration detention. 

>Women who wake up every morning unsure when they will see their families again. 

>Women who hold each other up, because sometimes it is the only support we have. 

>A woman who gets her period while being transferred to a detention center, while her hands, waist, and feet are shackled so tightly she can’t even lift her arms to scratch her head. The bus doesn’t stop. There is no bathroom. She sits for hours, unable to move, as blood soaks through her clothes. 

>I think about the woman who is six months pregnant, barely sleeping because of the pain in her back and body. The only “nutritional” food the facility gives her to sustain the new life she carries is a “salad” made of just lettuce. She is afraid to seek medical attention. “Medical is not good.” All you do there is sit on a cold stool in a smelly room until they send you back. 

>Pregnancy becomes a higher risk here. We are haunted by the knowledge that one of the women before us lost her baby in the bathroom. They deported her the next day. 

>There are women of all ages here. One grandmother told a judge she would accept never leaving her son’s house, if it meant she could spend her last years with family. “I don’t want to die alone,” she says. 

>Another woman, in her late 60s, cried every day because she was being deported to a country where she had no address, home, or anyone waiting for her. I tried to tell her it would be okay. Her son and sister would take care of her, send her money. Don’t worry. But at her age, she doesn’t know how to use technology. Her family told us it was really difficult to contact her.

🧊 EXCLUSIVE: I’m the Palestinian Who Has Been in ICE Detention for Almost a Year. Don't forget us on International Women's Day.