Asylum-seeking nurse is back home in Maine after union colleagues demanded her release.

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

“We were able to organize a rally for Debora within 24 hours of finding out she had been detained by ICE,” said Kelli Brennan, RN at Maine Med and nurse leader with MSNA. “We knew we had to take action, first to stop her from being transferred out of New England while in custody, but also to demand her release. We’re incredibly proud that nurses and the community came together in Portland to advocate for her, and now we need to figure out how to stop ICE.”

Who: Union nurses, community, and allies
What: Press conference about Debora Kapisha’s release
When: Friday, Aug. 7, 11:30 a.m.
Where: Western Promenade next to Maine Medical Center, Portland, Maine

“This story is a testament to the power of organized nurses,” said Puneet Maharaj, executive director of CNA/NNOC/NNU. “Nurses in Maine found out one of their own was locked up and sprung into action to get her out. Their success is a story of collective action being undeniable, and it’s a model for how we all band together to free everyone from ICE detention and abolish this fascist agency of secret police that is abducting and torturing our neighbors.”

Kapisha is a medical-surgical nurse at Maine Med and, according to coworkers, is a first-year nurse and a beloved colleague on her unit. Originally from Zambia, she is legally authorized to live and work in the United States while she waits for her asylum case to be processed. On July 30, ICE detained Kapisha while she was traveling through Boston Logan International Airport. Her union has been coordinating with her attorneys for her release and Maine Med nurses are demanding their employer sponsor her permanent residency.

Since ICE began its racist campaign of kidnapping and terrorizing our communities, National Nurses United has called it out as an illegitimate, violent, paramilitary organization that must be abolished. On top of people that immigrant enforcement officers have shot and killed in the streets, such as Johan Sebastián Guerrero in Maine, 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.

MSNA/NNOC represents more than 4,000 nurses across the state of Maine.

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 more than 225,000 members nationwide.