On September 29, federal prosecutor Jerome Morgan, assisted by FBI agent Jennifer Runyan, publicly charged a Michigan nurse with assisting the escape of a man held by ICE from a hospital.

The charge stems from an incident that began on May 28, when Border Patrol agents ambushed a Mexican immigrant living in Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, in the street. The government has identified the victim only by initials, as O.B.P. When the agents rushed him, he ran, fell, and struck his head.

Border Patrol called Ann Arbor EMS, and local paramedics took O.B.P. to Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital, where he received a CT scan. ICE agents accompanied him into the hospital but did not thoroughly guard him at all times.

Then, Chloe Freeman, a Registered Nurse working her shift, entered the CT room, spoke with O.B.P., and helped him walk through several doors, exit the hospital, and walk out free. He has not been recaptured.

We are not neutral. We celebrate that O.B.P., whom the government does not want us to think of as a human being with a name, is free. Encouragingly, news posts from major Michigan media on this story are flooded with comments from members of the public supporting Freeman’s action and insisting it is not medical workers’ job to assist police in holding people prisoner.

Freeman prevented a deportation. Medical workers have a duty of care to their patients and the community, not to the government, and not to Trump’s reactionary, anti-immigrant agenda. The man she helped was under arrest, going to jail indefinitely, about to be ripped away from his friends, family, job, and life in Michigan for no good reason. Being Mexican is not a crime. Crossing the border is not a crime. Immigrants are part of the working class.

Freeman’s employer did not see it this way. When police questioned her (thus collaborating with ICE), she openly said that she disagreed with ICE separating immigrants from their families. Trinity Health fired Freeman and has refused to make any public statement on the events of May 28. It is criminal that this and other hospital systems allow ICE and CBP agents to enter medical buildings.

This non-profit is the sixth largest U.S. hospital system, with 125,000 employees, and one of several Catholic Church affiliated systems that operate dozens of hospitals across broad swathes of the country. It is sad but not surprising Trinity CEO Michael Slubowski, who makes $7 million a year, doesn’t live by the words of Exodus 22:21, “You shall not oppress the foreigner who lives among you.”

Freeman appeared in the federal district court in Detroit, and was charged with a misdemeanor of “instigating or assisting escape,” with a penalty of up to one year in prison.

The choice to pursue a misdemeanor rather than a felony means that the Trump Justice Department did not have to place the case before a grand jury to get an indictment. Grand juries have refused felony indictments sought against anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles and Chicago.

Unfortunately, nurses at Trinity Health Ann Arbor are not currently unionized, but three hundred nurses at the Trinity Health Hospital in nearby Chelsea, Michigan recently unionized in the Michigan Nurses Association. This is also the union of thousands of workers in the vast University of Michigan hospital system.

In January of this year, as the MNA won a unionization vote by 86 percent at the Lansing area Sparrow Hospital University of Michigan unit, bringing in 200 new members, the MNA led a rally at the state capitol honoring Alex Pretti, the Veterans Affairs nurse murdered in broad daylight by Border Patrol while protesting deportations in Minneapolis. The union must continue to organize against ICE.

The MNA — and other unions, including the UAW auto workers, teacher unions, ATU city bus drivers, and more — need to mobilize against both deportations and retaliatory firings. Workers can unite with University of Michigan students in Ann Arbor against cases like this. ICE and CBP are continuing to kidnap immigrants in Michigan with the quiet consent of the Democratic governor and mayors. One of these ambushes caused the death of Guatemalan construction worker Mario Coronado in Grand Rapids.

The working class in Michigan should oppose the prosecution of Chloe Freeman as a way of supporting freedom and equal rights for all immigrants, free speech, and workers’ right not to collaborate with ICE.

Drop the charge! And reinstate this nurse with full back pay!

The post Michigan Nurse Chloe Freeman Prosecuted After Helping Patient Escape ICE appeared first on Left Voice.

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