Debora Kapisha, the registered nurse detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently at Portland International Jetport, has been released from ICE custody and is on her way home to Maine. Kapisha, a medical-surgical nurse at Maine Medical Center in Portland, is a member of Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee an affiliate of National Nurses United, the country’s largest nurses union.

Hundreds of union registered nurses, community allies, and elected officials rallied in Portland, Maine to demand the release of Debora Kapisha, RN, a nurse at Maine Medical Center who is currently detained by ICE. They scored a major first victory by successfully blocking her transfer from Massachusetts to Louisiana, where she would have been far from her family, legal counsel, and support network.

On Saturday, Aug. 8, Community First Medical Center nurses will hold a rally and community event in Chicago to highlight their concerns about the impact of federal funding cuts on the hospital, which is already struggling with chronic staffing and equipment shortages exacerbated by poor management. A report from NNU put Community First on “Red Alert” status, warning that it faces a dire threat of service cuts and closure because of its reliance on federal funding.

RNs at Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital, a CommonSpirit hospital in Grass Valley, California, will hold a rally on Aug. 6, 2026, to protest the hospital’s planned layoffs of seven nurses who work at the hospital. Nurses are also extremely concerned that hospital management is proposing to cut the patient care hours of the Ambulatory Treatment Center.

Nurses at Maine Medical Center 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 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.

RNs delivered a petition to their employer opposing CommonSpirit Health’s planned layoffs of more than 175 frontline health care workers signed by more than 5,000 nurses. The nurses held a rally and press conference to protest the proposed layoffs at 17 hospitals in California and their impact on patient safety. The nurses are demanding that CommonSpirit Health immediately rescind the layoffs.

NNU castigated the Israeli government for destroying or badly damaging almost all of Gaza’s medicine warehouses as part of its ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people and in flagrant violation of a United Nations resolution prohibiting the targeting of medical facilities and medical workers during armed conflict.

Registered nurses will hold a press conference and rally at California Hospital Medical Center, in Los Angeles, Calif., on Monday, Aug. 3, to protest owner and operator CommonSpirit Health’s planned layoffs at 17 hospitals in California. Nurses say layoffs will jeopardize patient care and harm communities.

Registered nurses at Jackson Park Hospital and Medical Center (JPH) will hold an informational picket on Friday, July 31, 2026, to raise their concerns about short staffing of both nurses and ancillary staff putting patients at risk, contributing to a high staff turnover, and creating challenges recruiting and retaining nurses.

National Nurses United announced today that RNs will be joining protests on Saturday, July 25 to demand justice for the murders of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.