Iowa Hospital Workers Demand Return of Deported Co-Worker
Fatou Traore was on her way to work as a custodian at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC) on the morning of Thursday, September 24, when ICE agents detained her.
Despite having legal immigration status in the United States and no criminal record, she was deported to Sierra Leone (a place she has no connection to) on October 12. Traore is a beloved member of the Iowa City community and of AFSCME Council 61, Local 12. She is also the mother of four children, the youngest of whom is three years old.
When I first heard the news of her September detention, I was upset that ICE had taken someone from the very hospital where I worked. Many of the workers at the hospital weren’t aware of her detention or were afraid to speak up. I wrote to all of the inpatient phlebotomists I used to work with at main campus, some of whom had also been custodians and worked with Fatou.
I wrote an opinion letter for a local paper, Little Village. I helped spread the word to raise awareness of her detention across community networks, from my supervisors and senior administration at UIHC, to the soccer team that my son plays on, to the yoga community I belong to, to my own family and their church communities, to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which I graduated from in 2022—to every person that I knew.
HOSPITAL SILENT
Next I thought a petition would be a good way to spark awareness and collective action. Months earlier a petition had circulated to change an unpopular parking policy the hospital wanted to put in place.
This time our petition called on the hospital—and the other community powers that be—to speak out against Traore’s detention. But the hospital didn’t budge, saying, “You can voice your opinion as a private citizen, but we can’t make any kind of statement about this.”
That’s precisely the problem; the people who have the most stake in protesting ICE’s actions and what happened to Fatou aren’t safe to do it—they aren’t safe as private citizens. That is why the hospital and so many organizations in Iowa need to be standing up and saying this is wrong. Fatou’s detention and deportation is an abomination. We need her back home.
Since her detention, her family and community, the worker center Escucha Mi Voz Iowa, the Iowa City Catholic Worker, and the Immigrant Welcome Network have been working tirelessly for her release, rallying the local and wider communities and calling on state representatives and religious leaders to denounce ICE’s actions.
During the legal proceedings put in motion on her behalf, Fatou was denied due process. The government deported her to a third country before a judge could rule on her stay motion, and her request for a credible fear interview was ignored.
“Due process means giving people a meaningful opportunity to be heard before the government takes an action with devastating consequences,” said Mazahir Salih of Immigrant Welcome Network.
WE’RE NOT DISPOSABLE
Fatou is a pillar of our community and our workplace. Her work at UIHC has touched countless lives, demonstrating her commitment to improving the health and well-being of others.
I’m a phlebotomist and she’s a custodian, so we’re kind of in a similar role where we’re coming in and out of patient rooms, mostly doing our work behind the scenes, and very underappreciated.
We’re thought of as disposable, and people have the impression that we don’t matter—if we’re not there to do our job, then they can fill it with anybody else—and it's just not true. The people who work these jobs are committed to being there. She had the resilience to keep showing up and doing that job for over a decade.
We call on the powers that be—the Department of Homeland Security, local representatives, and community leaders, and UIHC—to intervene to bring Fatou back now, and on Iowa’s congressional delegation to demand answers about why she was deported before a ruling on her stay motion and why her request for a credible fear interview was denied.
We need her here. As her co-workers, we have circulated a petition, attended rallies, written letters, spread the word of her story, called our representatives, and agonized every day of her absence. She belongs with us. Bring her back now.
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Sara Gilmore is a phlebotomy technician at the University of Iowa Health Care Medical Center. She's an AFSCME Local 12 member.