A University of San Francisco professor and nurse has spent nearly two months in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, prompting former students and colleagues to call for her release.
Dr. Ann Lawani, 39, was arrested at her home in Lodi, California, on September 16 before being transferred to an immigration detention facility in Louisiana.
According to her attorney, Natalia Vieira Santanna, Lawani was moved from Stockton to Bakersfield, then El Paso, and ultimately to Louisiana.
The Department of Homeland Security said Lawani, a Nigerian national, overstayed a visitor visa and was subject to a final removal order issued in 2013.
‘She received due process and was issued a final order of removal on August 6, 2013,’ the DHS told ABC10.
DHS said Lawani will remain detained by ICE while authorities proceed with her removal from the United States.
Vanessa Laucirica, one of Lawani’s former students, said she was stunned when she learned about the arrest, describing the moment as feeling like ‘my stomach just dropped.’
Eileen Fry-Bowers, dean and professor at the University of San Francisco’s School of Nursing and Health Professions, said Lawani’s absence has been deeply felt across the school.
Dr Ann Lawani, 39, was arrested at her home in Lodi, California, on September 16 and has remained in ICE custody
The Department of Homeland Security said Lawani, who is from Nigeria, overstayed a visitor visa and was issued a final removal order in 2013
Lawani was taken into custody about three weeks after the academic term began, leaving the university scrambling to arrange coverage for her classes and responsibilities.
‘It’s been a challenge,’ Fry-Bowers told the outlet. ‘It, frankly, it feels like a bomb was dropped into our school.’
As the university’s program director, Lawani was responsible for more than 200 master’s students studying across three campuses.
A petition demanding her release had gathered almost 16,000 signatures by early Thursday morning.
California Democratic Rep. Josh Harder said there appeared to be ‘no apparent public safety justification for keeping Dr. Lawani detained thousands of miles from home while her case proceeds.’
On October 20, Harder wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, urging officials to return Lawani to California.
Lawani is being held at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, according to The New York Times.
She has said ICE agents did not explain why she was being arrested when she asked them and that they did not show her a warrant.
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Lawani was a program director and associate professor at the University of San Francisco while also working as a nurse at John Muir Health in the Bay Area
Lawani is being detained at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, pictured
Vieira Santanna acknowledged that Lawani had a 2013 order but argued that DHS had failed to present the full context surrounding her immigration case.
‘It is true that Dr. Lawani has an order from 2013,’ Vieira Santanna told the outlet. ‘However, at the same date that this order was entered by an immigration judge, she was also granted a protection in the form of withholding of removal.’
DHS said Lawani entered the country in 2007 on a visitor visa and later sought asylum. An immigration judge rejected that application in 2013.
Her attorney, however, said the judge determined that Lawani could not be returned to Nigeria because she would likely face persecution there.
Vieira Santanna also said Lawani had renewed her employment authorization, which remains valid until 2029.
Lawani is awaiting a federal judge’s decision on a habeas corpus petition alleging that the government violated her constitutional rights.
The filing seeks her release from detention, although it does not establish whether she would be permitted to remain in the United States.
DHS said Lawani was detained because a final removal order had been issued against her on August 6, 2013
Lawani’s older brother, Sam, described his sister’s detention as ‘the worst time of my life.’
He said it felt as though she had been ‘siphoned into an abyss and there was nothing I could do about it.’
Immigration enforcement was cited as one factor behind the Republican Party’s significant losses in the midterm elections.
Around six in 10 voters said immigration enforcement had gone too far and reported either ‘somewhat’ or ‘strongly’ disapproving of ICE’s performance, according to the Associated Press.
President Donald Trump recently named Stephen Miller as the new White House chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles.
Miller, among Trump’s most trusted and longest-serving advisers, has built a reputation for advocating strict immigration policies.
Opponents have described him as a key force behind some of Trump’s most controversial measures, including the separation of migrant families during deportation operations in the president’s first term.
Our News Outlet contacted ICE, the DHS agency that oversees it, and Lawani’s attorney, Vieira Santanna, for comment.
