Union nurses successfully blocked transfer to Louisiana of coworker who is an asylum-seeker from Zambia

Hundreds of union registered nurses, community allies, and elected officials rallied in Portland, Maine today to demand the release of Debora Kapisha, RN, a nurse at Maine Medical Center (MMC) who is currently detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (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.

Nurses at Maine Med are represented by Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (MSNA/NNOC), an affiliate of National Nurses United (NNU), the country’s largest nurses union.

Kapisha now has a bond hearing set for Monday, August 10. Nurses have already written Kapisha more than 100 letters of support, continue to demand her release from ICE custody, and are calling on MMC to sponsor her for permanent residency.

"I know firsthand the character she is and the kindness she brings to those around her,” Abigail Nelson, RN, said of Kapisha at the August 5 protest. “Nurses like her are not easy to replace, and the patients, our community, we're all feeling her loss."

Kapisha is a medical-surgical nurse at Maine Med who is legally authorized to live and work in the country while she waits for her asylum case from Zambia to be processed. On July 30, ICE detained Kapisha while she was traveling through Boston Logan International Airport. Her union is coordinating with her attorneys for her release and demanding her employer sponsor her permanent residency.

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.

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.