Maine surgical nurse released from immigration detention following outcry

A registered nurse is back with her family after a weeklong fight with the support of community members and colleagues from Maine Medical Center, who demanded she be released from immigration detention.

In her first statement since being released Thursday evening, the nurse, Debora Kapisha, said she is “so thankful to be home and can’t wait to return to my co-workers and patients.”

Sara English, a nurse at Maine Medical Center, read the statement on behalf of Kapisha during a news conference Friday morning hosted by National Nurses United, the country’s largest nurses union, and its affiliate Maine State Nurses Association.

“We protect each other and we protect our patients. And in this case, we stood up for and we protected Debora,” Janelle Crowley, a NICU nurse at Maine Medical Center and a union leader at Maine State Nurses Association, said at the news conference.

Originally from Zambia, Kapisha is a medical-surgical nurse at Maine Medical Center who works with dialysis patients, according to the union.

“It’s a tough unit to work on,” Kelli Brennan, a registered nurse at Maine Medical Center and co-president of Maine State Nurses Association, told NBC News in a phone interview. “It’s definitely an area that we need her in.”

According to the union, ICE officers detained Kapisha on July 30 while she was traveling through Boston’s Logan International Airport.

The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. On Wednesday, ICE told NBC affiliate WCSH of Portland that Kapisha entered the United States legally in 2024 on a five-month visa, but “failed to depart” before that visa expired.

Kapisha’s union and her employer have said she has been living and working in the United States legally while her asylum case remains pending.

“We’re going to keep advocating for Debora,” Brennan said. “We’re celebrating our victory today. But this is not the end, and we have to keep fighting.”

In a statement Thursday, Britt Crewse, president of MaineHealth’s Southern Region, which includes Maine Medical Center, expressed his concern over Kapisha’s immigration detention, “especially given that this individual appears to have been living and working here legally.”

Kapisha’s case has also put a spotlight on how healthcare workers are being caught in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s immigration detention and mass deportation operations.

In Maine, a surge in immigration enforcement and the killing of Biddeford resident Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero by ICE officers have had ripple effects in the hospital where she works, Brennan said.

These events led to staff shortages at her hospital, according to Brennan, affecting all departments including healthcare, cleaning, dietary and ancillary workers.

“People were doing jobs that they don’t normally do,” she said, such as doctors pushing stretchers in the halls to transport patients to and from their procedures. “Everybody was worried and concerned for each other.”

“Our colleagues were afraid to leave the house. Our patients were afraid to come to appointments,” Brennan added. “We definitely have a reliance on immigrants to to help run our healthcare system.”

Crewse added that “enforcement surge by immigration authorities has many of our care team members on edge.”