DETROIT—A Michigan nurse is facing federal charges for allegedly helping an injured immigrant patient walk out of a hospital while in immigration custody—a case that has sparked outrage among healthcare workers and immigrant rights activists across the state.
Chloe Freeman, a 33-year-old registered nurse from Whitmore Lake, was charged in late August with “instigating or assisting escape,” a federal misdemeanor carrying up to a year in prison. She made her initial appearance in federal court in Detroit on Sept. 29, was released on a $10,000 unsecured bond, and has pleaded not guilty. Her next court date is scheduled for Oct. 20. Activists and healthcare workers are calling for court support on that date.
The charges stem from an incident on May 28, when federal agents tried to arrest a Mexican immigrant in Ann Arbor. The man ran, tripped over a curb, and struck his face on the pavement, bleeding from the wound. Agents took him to Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital for treatment. After a CT scan, according to the FBI, Freeman allegedly entered the room, removed the patient’s IV, and guided him through several doors to the ambulance bay. He walked out and has not been recaptured.
According to an FBI affidavit, when investigators questioned Freeman in June, she told them she disagreed with ICE separating families and that she knew she was “going to set him free.” She also said she did not believe the man was in custody at the time because no ICE agents were in the room with him during the CT scan.
Trinity Health fired Freeman, who no longer works at the hospital and has moved out of the area. Her attorney, Matthew Borgula, said she “looks forward to defending herself in a court of law.”
Nurses on the front lines against deportation agenda
Freeman’s case is the latest flashpoint in a broader struggle between healthcare workers and the Trump administration’s deportation agenda.
As People’s World reported in August, Debora Kapisha, a registered nurse at Maine Medical Center, was detained by ICE for a week while traveling through Boston’s Logan Airport—despite being legally authorized to work in the U.S. while her asylum case was processed. Only after more than 200 nurses, union members, and community supporters rallied outside the hospital was she released.
The pattern extends beyond nurses. In Iowa, Fatou Traore, a custodian at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and a member of AFSCME Local 12, was detained on Sept. 24 on her way to work. Despite having legal immigration status and no criminal record, she was deported to Sierra Leone—a country she has no connection to—on Oct. 12. Her co-workers have demanded answers and called on the hospital to speak out.
As Sara Gilmore, a phlebotomist at UIHC, wrote in Labor Notes: “We’re thought of as disposable, and people have the impression that we don’t matter. The people who work these jobs are committed to being there.”
Hospital workers are increasingly finding themselves targeted by ICE, both as immigrants and as the people who care for immigrant patients. When ICE enters hospitals, it puts healthcare workers in the impossible position of having to choose between their professional duty to care for patients and the Trump administration’s demand that they collaborate in deportations.
A warning to every healthcare worker
A Change.org petition calling for the charges against Freeman to be dropped has gained hundreds of signatures.
“A federal criminal case against a nurse is a heavy response, and it risks telling healthcare workers everywhere that showing compassion for a patient could cost them their freedom and their career,” the petition reads. “Nurses are trained to put patients first. Prosecuting one for acting on that instinct won’t make hospitals safer or fairer.”
The decision to pursue a misdemeanor rather than a felony is significant. It means prosecutors did not have to present the case to a grand jury—and grand juries have refused felony indictments against anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Stand with Chloe Freeman on Oct. 20
Healthcare workers and their allies are organizing a court support action on Oct. 20 at 1:00 p.m. outside the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in Detroit.
Nurses and hospital workers are urged to wear their lab coats and scrubs. Other sections of organized labor and the working class are called to join in solidarity.
They are demanding that charges against Chloe Freeman be dropped and that no one should face prison for showing genuine compassion to a patient, regardless of immigration status.
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