A U.S. district court in Minnesota has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release Michael Opeoluwa Egbele, an illegal Nigerian immigrant who entered the United States in 2003 and was arrested for a drug-related offence in 2012.
Senior U.S. District Judge John M. Gerrard issued the ruling on Wednesday, giving ICE until February 20, 2026, to free Egbele and submit a status report confirming his release. The judge found that ICE lacked legal grounds to detain him under the circumstances of his case.
Egbele’s immigration challenges began after his 2012 arrest, when he was charged in court and faced deportation proceedings. He applied for asylum and requested that his removal be withheld, but an immigration judge denied his request and ordered his removal in July 2012. ICE, however, neither enforced the removal order nor did Egbele appeal. Instead, he reached an agreement with the U.S. government for supervised release in December 2012, which required him to attend regular check-ins with ICE.
The arrangement continued for over a decade until January 2026, when Egbele was detained during a routine check-in. He subsequently petitioned the Minnesota district court, arguing that he had not been notified of any revocation of his supervision order and that ICE had not explained the purported revocation. ICE contended that the revocation was partly due to Egbele’s “failure to obtain or attempt to obtain a travel document to Nigeria.”
Following his arrest, Egbele was unable to contact his wife or lawyer for several days. He was transferred between facilities without disclosure of his location. His wife later learned from another detainee that he had been held in Montana before being moved to a detention centre in New Mexico.
The Trump administration maintained that Egbele’s detention was lawful and questioned the Minnesota court’s jurisdiction. Judge Gerrard dismissed this argument, noting that ICE had failed to enforce Egbele’s removal order since 2012. He emphasized that the government could not abruptly revoke a decades-long supervised release arrangement without demonstrating a breach of its conditions.
“Nothing in the brief even attempts to identify any change in circumstances that would warrant detention,” the judge stated, ruling that Egbele’s detention was “unlawful.” He ordered, “The government shall immediately release the petitioner from custody subject to and in accordance with the conditions in his preexisting Order of Supervision,” and required ICE to file a compliance report by February 20, 2026.
