By Jasper Ward
WASHINGTON, Sept 29 (Reuters) – A Michigan nurse was charged with helping a Mexican national escape from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at the hospital where she worked, court documents unsealed on Tuesday showed.
Chloe Renae Freeman, 33, of Whitmore Lake, Michigan, was charged in late August with “willfully” helping an unnamed immigrant subject to removal from the United States escape federal custody at Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital, FBI Special Agent Michael Wagner said in a criminal complaint.
The unnamed Mexican citizen injured himself while trying to escape ICE agents on May 28, the complaint said. He was taken to the hospital, where Freeman worked, for a medical evaluation and later underwent a CT scan, Wagner said.
After the scan was completed, Freeman removed the immigrant from the scan room, according to the complaint. Security camera footage showed the man leaving the hospital through ambulance bay doors less than three minutes after Freeman retrieved him, the complaint said.
He has not been located since, according to the complaint.
Wagner said Freeman admitted during a June 18 interview that she allowed the individual to leave the hospital. While she knew he was an ICE detainee, she said she did not believe he was in custody at the time because agents were not physically with him in the CT room.
“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.
He added that Freeman said she believed the man could have died from his injuries.
Trinity Health said Freeman no longer works for the hospital.
The US Department of Homeland Security and a lawyer for Freeman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Freeman was expected to appear in federal court in Detroit on Tuesday, according to the Detroit News. Her lawyer, Matthew Borgula, told the newspaper that Freeman planned to plead not guilty.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Caitlin Webber and Deepa Babington)
