A federal criminal complaint accuses an Ann Arbor, Michigan nurse of helping a man escape ICE custody from inside the hospital where she worked, after he was brought in for treatment following an injury he suffered while running from Border Patrol agents.
Chloe Renae Freeman, 33, of Whitmore Lake, Michigan, is charged with instigating or assisting an escape, a federal misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison, according to a criminal complaint filed by FBI Special Agent Michael Wagner. Freeman worked as a nurse at Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital. She has pleaded not guilty.
What the complaint says happened
U.S. Border Patrol agents were carrying out an immigration enforcement operation near the intersection of Washtenaw Avenue and Pittsfield Boulevard in Ann Arbor on May 28, 2026, when a man they approached ran, tripped, and struck his face on the pavement, according to the complaint. Agents took him into custody, noticed he was bleeding from his head, and called an ambulance. He was taken to Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital for a medical evaluation and later underwent a CT scan.
An IV removed, and a call to “hold him”
Investigators say Freeman removed the man's IV and walked him to the hospital's ambulance bay. After his CT scan was completed, she allegedly told hospital staff to keep him there rather than return him to his room. Badge-swipe records show Freeman accessed the second-floor CT room that day, and security camera footage shows the man leaving the hospital through the ambulance bay doors less than three minutes after Freeman retrieved him, the complaint states. Agents have not located him since.
During a June 18, 2026 interview with investigators, Freeman admitted she let the man leave. She told them she did not agree with separating people from their families.
“I knew she was going to set him free.”Chloe Freeman, to FBI investigators, per the criminal complaint
Whatever you think about immigration enforcement, the facts described in this complaint are about a nurse using her hospital access — a badge, a CT scan room, an ambulance bay — to make a unilateral call about a person in custody who wasn't hers to release. I understand the instinct to want to protect a patient. But the moment you act on your own politics instead of your orders and your scope of practice, you've stopped making a clinical decision and started making a legal one — and federal agents built most of this case from her own hospital's badge logs and camera footage. That's worth sitting with before any of us decides a hospital system is ours to use as leverage.
Where the case stands
Freeman made her initial court appearance in federal court in Detroit and was released on a $10,000 unsecured bond. She is due back in court October 20, 2026. Trinity Health has not said publicly whether Freeman remains employed there, and the man she is accused of helping escape has not been located.
No Michigan Board of Nursing action against Freeman had been reported as of publication. Licensure discipline is handled separately from the criminal case, and state boards typically open their own review once charges like these become public record. The misdemeanor charge Freeman faces is narrower than the felony obstruction and harboring statutes federal prosecutors have used in other cases tied to immigration enforcement, which can carry years, rather than months, of exposure.