The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) showed up at the front door of Dr. Ann Ozaze Lawani in Lodi, California, while she was still in her pyjamas, shackled her wrists, waist, and ankles, from there she vanished into a secretive interstate detention pipeline, being shipped all the way to a detention centre in Louisiana.
She’s a frontline nurse who worked through the worst of COVID, directs the master’s nursing program at the University of San Francisco (overseeing 230+ nursing students), and takes care of her 83-year-old dad.
For three agonizing days, Dr. Lawani’s family had no idea where she was on the continent until she was finally able to place a phone call from Louisiana. California State Senator Jerry McNerney (D-Stockton) condemned the agency’s actions in a formal statement:
“ICE disappearing her from her home is an absolute outrage. It’s even more outrageous that ICE essentially kidnapped Professor Lawani, shackled her at the ankles, waist and hands, and secreted her to Louisiana, without notifying her family, her attorney, or the public—despite the fact that she has a valid federal work permit to stay in the U.S. To date, ICE ‘has disappeared’ an estimated 20,000 people throughout the nation, effectively denying them their right to due process.”
ICE’s online locator came back with “0 results when her family tied to locate her whereabout.” It turns out ICE quietly changed its policy the day before her arrest to stop listing thousands of detainees in the public database, so her family had no idea where she was for days while ICE bounced from Stockton to Bakersfield to El Paso to Louisiana.
Department of Homeland Security put out a statement claiming she had a 2013 removal order, but they conveniently left out that on the same day in 2013, an immigration judge granted her ‘Withholding of Removal’ blocking her deportation to Nigeria because she faced persecution there.
She has no criminal record, has checked in with ICE for 13 years, and has a valid federal work permit through 2029. Because they legally can’t send her to Nigeria, Rep. Josh Harder says ICE has been trying to quietly deport her to an undisclosed third country behind her lawyer’s back.
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 who is being held in a federal immigration detention centre.
Lawani, 39, a native of Nigeria who has lived and worked in the United States for 21 years on a valid work permit, was taken from her Lodi home in shackles by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement eight weeks ago.
Colleagues say Lawani was initially transported from a detention centre in Stockton to El Paso, Texas, and subsequently transferred across the country to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Centre, where she remains detained.
“Dr. Lawani has spent her entire career in service to our community, and ICE shows up on her doorstep while her elderly father is asleep in the home, whisks her away from her family, and then transports her across the entire part of the country,” said U.S. Rep. Josh Harder, D-Calif.