One of the Many Expressive Signs at The August 5, 2026 Emergency Protest Over ICE’s Detention of Registered Nurse Deborah Kapisha on the Western Promenade in Portland.
Some of the 200+ Nurses in the Front Yard of Maine Medical Center Protesting the Illegal and Inhumane Detention of RN Deborah Kapisha on August 5, 2026.
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/ANNOC), an affiliate of National Nurses United (NNU), the counry’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 Keli Brennan, RN a 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.”
“This story is a testament to the power of organized nurses,” said Puneet Mahara, 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 undenable, 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.”
Ms. Kapisha is a medical-surgical nurse at Maine Med and according to coworkers, is a first-year nurse and a beloved colleague on the unit. Originally from Zambia, she is legally auhorized to live and work in the United States while she waits for her asylum case to be processed. On July 30, ICE detained Ms. 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 EMPLOYEER 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 enforcemet officers have shot and killed in the streets, such as Johan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, at least 52 people have died within the immigration detention system during Trump’s second term mainly due to withholding of adquaate medical care, according to Human Rights Watch.