The federal government is charging a Michigan nurse accused of illegally helping an undocumented immigrant, who was being treated in a hospital, escape from immigration officials, court records unsealed this week show. An FBI agent’s declaration submitted in a federal court accuses Chloe Renae Freeman, 33, of “instigating or assisting escape”, a federal misdemeanor, by helping a patient leave an Ann Arbor hospital while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in May. The patient, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, had been arrested about two hours earlier by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) border patrol agents.
Freeman, who worked at the hospital at the time, told hospital investigators she did not agree with federal immigration officials “separating people from their families” and that she “was going to set him free”, the FBI complaint says. The undocumented man had still not been caught by the time she was charged in August. This is one of the latest examples of people facing charges for anti-ICE actions, as the agency and its aggressive anti-immigrant crackdown grow widely unpopular.
In some cases, charges against protesters and anti-ICE advocates have fallen apart under scrutiny. But in others, the Trump administration has been successful in prosecuting activists. Freeman had voluntarily surrendered to the authorities and had her first hearing in federal court on Tuesday.
She was released on a $10,000 bond. Attorneys representing Freeman told the Guardian they were not making any public statements at the time. On 28 May, border patrol encountered an undocumented Mexican man in Ann Arbor during a “targeted immigration enforcement operation”, the FBI complaint says.
The man, identified only as “OBP” in the court records, had been previously removed from the US in 2022 and appears to have re-entered the country without permission, according to the authorities, which is a federal infraction. When agents attempted to arrest OBP, he took off running, tripped over a curb and hit his face on the pavement, the complaint says. Agents arrested OBP, noticed his injuries and called for an ambulance.
EMS workers recommended he be taken to a hospital to treat his injuries. While at Trinity Health Ann Arbor hospital, where Freeman worked, medical staff noticed in his paperwork he was in ICE custody. They took him to receive a CT scan for his injuries.
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