USF professor and Bay Area nurse detained by ICE, sparking outrage and calls for release – NBC Bay Area

Family members, colleagues and a U.S. Congressman are demanding the immediate release and return of Dr. Ann Lawani, a highly regarded Bay Area nurse and USF professor, held in a federal immigration detention center.

Lawani, 39, a native of Nigeria who has lived and worked in the United States for 21 years with a valid work permit, was taken from her Lodi home in chains by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement eight weeks ago.

Her colleagues say Lawani was first transported from a detention center in Stockton to El Paso, Texas, and then transferred across the country to the ICE processing center in southern Louisiana, where she remains detained.

“Dr. Lawani has spent her entire career serving our community, and ICE shows up at her door while her elderly father sleeps at home, takes her away from her family, and then transports her across the entire country,” said U.S. Rep. Josh Harder, Democrat of California.

Harder noted that Lawani was granted a legal status known as “withholding of deportation” due to the threat of persecution in Nigeria, allowing him to live and work legally in the United States. Harder sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin demanding the immediate return of Lawani and his family to California.

“This goes against everything ICE has said publicly,” Harder said. “They say they’re keeping our community safe and prioritizing people who threaten public safety. It’s the exact opposite.”

Colleagues and university leaders expressed deep frustration over the arrest of Lawani, who oversees the master’s degree in nursing program at USF and works weekends in the cardiovascular stroke unit at John Muir Health. They noted that she had spent her career caring for vulnerable patients, including on the front lines throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. His specialty is hospice and palliative care.

“I’m shocked. I’m angry. Here is a person who is committed to caring for others. In fact, the most vulnerable, in the sense that her specialty is hospice and palliative care, and yet she finds herself in this situation now. I find it unfathomable,” said Eileen Fry-Bowers, dean of the USF School of Nursing.

“I am appalled that someone like Dr. Lawani is in this situation. She is one of the best nurses I know,” Fry-Bowers added, speaking alongside other supporters. “I’m really upset that Anne is alone right now in a place where she’s not safe and she has to come home to us.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.