National Nurses United condemns the detainment of fellow registered nurse, Amanda Trebach, by federal agents. We call for her immediate release and a full dismissal of all the charges brought against her. 

All over the country, people have been standing up to the Trump administration’s immoral and unjust immigration raids, which have sowed intense fear and chaos in immigrant and migrant communities. In the absence of due process that protects Constitutional rights, people like Amanda Trebach – a RN and former member of California Nurses Association, an affiliate of National Nurses United – have taken up the essential role of monitoring ICE and Border Patrol, to protect the rights of community members and observe and document abductions by masked officers. While Amanda was participating in a community patrol Thursday morning, she was confronted by masked individuals believed to be ICE agents, pushed to the floor face-down, and violently detained. Her arrest is a direct and intentional attack against the constitutional right to protest. 

“As nurses, we advocate for our patients both at the bedside and beyond. Like all the violent escalations we have seen this year – including, but not limited, to using hospitals as a site for ICE law enforcement and arresting labor leaders and elected officials for demanding due process – they are meant to silence concerned Americans into accepting these authoritarian tactics,” said Sandy Reding, RN, who is a president of California Nurses Association and a vice president of National Nurses United, which is the nation’s largest union of registered nurses. “We refuse to stand by and watch as our patients and our community members are caught in the dragnet of the Trump administration’s cruel deportation schemes. Amanda must come home, and so must all the innocent people whose lives and whose families’ lives have been devastated by this administration.”

National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States with more than 225,000 members nationwide. NNU affiliates include California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, DC Nurses Association, Michigan Nurses Association, Minnesota Nurses Association, and New York State Nurses Association.