A Michigan nurse is facing a federal charge after she allegedly pulled the IV from an illegal alien in federal custody and walked him out of a hospital ambulance bay, and the man has not been found since.
Chloe Renae Freeman, 33, of Whitmore Lake, worked as a registered nurse at Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital when the escape happened on the night of May 28, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in the Eastern District of Michigan.
The FBI says she knowingly and willfully helped a Mexican national, identified in court papers only as “OBP,” leave the hospital before his treatment was finished and before he was discharged.
The charge is instigating or assisting escape, a federal misdemeanor that carries up to a year in prison. Freeman appeared September 29, pleaded not guilty, and was released on a $10,000 unsecured bond, according to Michigan News Source. Her next court date is October 20.
Border Patrol agents encountered OBP that night near Washtenaw Avenue and Pittsfield Boulevard in Ann Arbor during a targeted immigration enforcement operation, according to the complaint, as reported by The Guardian.
He had already been removed from the United States in 2022 and had come back without permission, a federal offense. When agents moved in, he ran, tripped over a curb, and hit his face on the pavement.
He was arrested with a laceration across the bridge of his nose and a contusion on his forehead, then taken by ambulance to Trinity Health Ann Arbor for a CT scan.
Hospital paperwork flagged him as an ICE custody patient. A CT technician later told investigators that Freeman and another nurse instructed the tech to hold the man in the scan room and not return him to his room.
Badge records show Freeman swiped into the CT room at 11:31 p.m. Security video showed OBP walking out the ambulance bay doors about a minute later, his face still bandaged and bloody, according to Reuters.
Law enforcement has been unable to locate him since.
On June 18, hospital investigators interviewed Freeman. She admitted she removed his IV and escorted him out the ambulance bay doors, according to the affidavit of FBI Special Agent Michael Wagner.
She said she knew he was an ICE custody patient. She then claimed she did not believe he was still in custody because the agents were not standing in the CT room with him.
Then she said the quiet part out loud.
“FREEMAN told the interviewers that she did not agree with ICE separating people from their families and that she knew she ‘was going to set him free,’” Wagner wrote in the complaint, as reported by Reuters.
She also acknowledged that, because of his injuries, he could have died.
Trinity Health Michigan confirmed to CBS Detroit that Freeman no longer works at the hospital. The system declined further comment, citing the active case. FOX 2 Detroit reported the complaint was filed August 28 and that the man still had not been found.
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