Michigan nurse prosecuted for freeing immigration police detainee: Drop the charges against Chloe Freeman!

4 October 2026facebook iconThe Trump administration has brought charges against a Michigan nurse for the “crime” of refusing to hand over a wounded immigrant worker to the deportation Gestapo. Chloe Renae Freeman, a registered nurse formerly employed by Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital, faces federal prosecution for “instigating or assisting escape.” She is the target of a political prosecution aimed at intimidating any worker who seeks to defend immigrants from state persecution.

The criminal complaint was filed on September 28 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The complaint was announced by US Attorney Jerome Gorgon Jr. He was joined by Special Agent in Charge Jennifer Runyan of the FBI.

The facts, as outlined in the criminal complaint, are straightforward and damning of the government’s position. On the night of May 28, 2026, Border Patrol agents conducted a “targeted immigration enforcement operation” in Ann Arbor against a Mexican worker identified in the complaint only by the initials “OBP.” At approximately 9:00 p.m., agents approached the man near the intersection of Washtenaw Avenue and Pittsfield Boulevard. As the man fled, he tripped over a curb, fell, and struck his face on the pavement, suffering a laceration to the bridge of his nose and a contusion on his forehead. Only after he was down and bleeding did immigration agents take him into custody.

The man was transported to Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital for a CT scan. There, at approximately 11:30 p.m., Freeman entered the CT room, removed the man’s IV and escorted him out through the ambulance bay doors. Security footage shows him leaving the hospital shortly after Freeman retrieved him. He has not been located since.

While Freeman admitted to her actions during a June 18 interview with Trinity Health investigators, she stated that she was unaware the man was in custody at the time, as no agents were with him in the CT room. She told investigators that she “did not agree with ICE separating people from their families” and that she knew she “was going to set him free.”

That is the extent of Freeman’s “crime.” A nurse, confronted with a wounded worker in her care, chose to treat him as a human being rather than a criminal to be delivered to his jailers. For this simple act of decency and working class solidarity, the full weight of the American state has been brought down upon her head. If convicted, she faces up to a year in federal prison.

The prosecution of Freeman underscores the class character of the American legal system. The courts, the FBI and the Department of Justice are not neutral arbiters of justice, but instruments of class rule. Their function in this case cannot be mistaken: the criminalization of working class solidarity, particularly with persecuted immigrants, and enforcement of the police state deportation machinery.

This is further demonstrated by the language of the Department of Justice’s press release. The man Freeman helped is not described as a “worker,” a “patient,” or a “human being.” He is a “detained illegal alien.” The document contains links to press releases of related prosecutions, all using similarly dehumanizing language.

The same “justice system” has not prosecuted the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents who murdered Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, a Veterans Administration nurse, in Minneapolis. Good’s killer was, in fact, defended by Vice President JD Vance, who declared that the agent who fatally shot her was protected by absolute immunity. Nor has the Department of Justice prosecuted the agents who murdered Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston or Joan Sebastián Guerrero in Maine. Furthermore, fifty-two immigrants have died in ICE custody in the first 500 days of Trump’s second administration.

Can you explain what rank-and-file committees are?How has the Democratic Party historically collaborated with Republicans on building up immigration enforcement, going back before Trump?Ask more questions at SocialismAI.comSince Trump’s return to power, ICE has been transformed into a paramilitary force. Armed agents stalk cities, seizing workers at homes, jobs, schools, hospitals and courthouses. Some 51,000 people were arrested in July 2026 alone. A nationwide network of concentration camps has been constructed in which men, women and children are held without charge.

One of the first actions of the second Trump administration was to rescind the nominal protections that kept ICE out of “sensitive locations,” such as healthcare facilities. Michigan healthcare providers report that encounters with ICE have become routine. Detainees injured by ICE are brought to emergency rooms under guard, and medical personnel are pressured to choose between patient care and colluding with the deportation apparatus.

The World Socialist Web Site demands the unconditional dropping of all charges against Chloe Freeman and calls on all workers to join in this demand. The real crime is the existence of ICE itself, a police state apparatus that murders, detains, and deports with impunity.

The Democratic Party will not defend Freeman, just as it will not seriously oppose the anti-immigrant rampage and police state methods of ICE. It assisted in constructing and funding the deportation machine and has maneuvered with Trump and the Republicans to expand funding for ICE and CBP while placing no restrictions on their operations.

This fight must be organized through the independent mobilization of the working class through the formation of rank-and-file committees in every hospital, workplace and neighborhood, and the mobilization of the full social power of the working class against the deportation apparatus.