Maine Medical Center nurses demand immediate release of their colleague from ICE detention

*Emergency protest set for Wednesday, Aug. 5, 10:30 a.m. at hospital*

Nurses at Maine Medical Center (MMC) in Portland, Maine are staging an emergency protest Wednesday, Aug. 5 to demand the immediate release of an RN colleague who is being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) despite the fact that she is legally authorized to live and work in the country while she waits for her asylum case from Zambia to be processed. MMC nurses are represented by Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, an affiliate of National Nurses United.

On July 30, ICE took into custody Debora Kapisha, a medical-surgical registered nurse at MMC while she was traveling through Logan Airport in Boston, Mass. ICE plans to transfer her Wednesday from Massachusetts to Louisiana, where she will be far from her family, legal counsel, and support systems. Her union is coordinating with her attorneys to work for her release and prevent the transfer.

Besides her release, her union nurse coworkers are demanding that their employer, Maine Medical Center, take immediate steps to formally sponsor her for permanent residency.

"Debora is an amazing nurse and takes great care of her patients," said Abigail Nelson, an MMC RN who has worked alongside Kapisha and considers her a friend. "She is a kind and supportive coworker. We are like a family here and it feels like a piece of us is missing."

• What: Protest demanding that ICE release Debora Kapisha, RN
• When: Wednesday, Aug. 5 10:30 ET
• Where: Maine Medical Center, Western Promenade near 22 Bramhall St., Portland, Maine

"ICE is imprisoning a nurse who cares for and saves lives every day in our community," said Cokie Giles, a Maine RN and vice president of NNU. "When ICE kidnaps critical, upstanding, and hardworking members of our community like this, they are broadcasting their real intentions and goal: To kick all Black and brown people out of the country and turn the United States into a fascist, white supremacist society - as well as terrorize all people who fight back. Nurses envision a just society and say, 'Absolutely not!'"

Since ICE began kidnapping Black and brown people and terrorizing our communities, National Nurses United has called it out as an illegitimate, violent, paramilitary organization that must be promptly abolished. On top of people that immigrant enforcement officers have shot and killed in the streets, such as Johan Sebastián Guerrero, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, VA RN Alex Pretti, and Renee Good, at least 52 people have died within the immigration detention system during Trump's second term mainly due to withholding of adequate medical care, according to Human Rights Watch.

Nurses are outraged though not surprised that their employer, MMC, has said it will not help Kapisha. MMC's owner, MaineHealth, is currently embroiled with its nurses in a fight to end a secretive agreement it has with Palantir, an A.I. company well known for its government contracts helping ICE target people for detention.

Maine State Nurses Association is part of National Nurses Organizing Committee, representing 4,000 nurses and other caregivers from Portland to Fort Kent. NNOC is an affiliate of National Nurses United, the largest and fastest-growing labor union of registered nurses in the United States with nearly 225,000 members nationwide.