ICE Detains Nurse With Legal Protection From Removal, Exposing the Gap Between Immigration Law and Enforcement Practice

A nursing professor with a 2013 grant of withholding of removal — a continuing legal bar to deportation — is detained and shuffled across three states. Her university, students, and congressman say the arrest had no public safety justification.

Ann Lawani, a 39-year-old nursing professor at the University of San Francisco, was arrested by ICE agents at her Lodi, California home in September. Nearly two months later, she has been transferred between detention centers in California, Texas, and Louisiana without clear explanation. Her university, students, and congressional representative are escalating demands for her release.

The legal facts are contested but consequential. DHS says Lawani entered the US on a visitor's visa in 2007 and overstayed, receiving a final removal order in August 2013. Her attorney, Natalia Santanna, calls that account incomplete: the same 2013 immigration judge who issued the removal order also found Lawani would more likely than not face persecution in Nigeria and granted withholding of removal. That grant is not temporary — it is a continuing legal bar to deportation to Nigeria. Lawani has lived in the US pursuant to that protection for over a decade. Lawani's professional record is substantial. She holds a master's and doctoral degree in nursing, oversees two programs at USF touching roughly 300 students, and specializes in hospice and palliative care. Her dean, Eileen Fry-Bowers, describes her as someone who cares for the most vulnerable patients during end-of-life transitions. Casey Murray, a graduate student 37 days from graduation, says Lawani could recall every student's first and last name from orientation. Congressman Josh Harder wrote to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin in late October, citing Lawani's longstanding compliance, lack of criminal history, and deep community ties. He raised specific procedural concerns: no notice before arrest, and her whereabouts not reflected in the online detainee database. The letter frames the detention as lacking any public safety justification. A habeas corpus petition challenging the legality of her detention is pending in California's eastern district court. The legal question is sharp: can ICE detain and potentially remove someone who holds a continuing judicial grant barring that removal? The answer matters beyond this case. The pattern here — a compliant, professionally established immigrant with legal protection swept into opaque multi-state detention — tests the boundary between enforcement discretion and legal constraint. The opacity of the transfer process, the failure to update public databases, and the absence of any criminal predicate suggest an enforcement apparatus operating with minimal accountability friction. Lawani's students and university have mobilized legal and political support. But the structural question is whether individual mobilization can substitute for systemic guardrails when enforcement agencies operate at this level of discretion. The habeas petition will provide one answer. The pattern of detention will provide another.